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BY THE SAME AUTHOR 



I 
BEYOND THE SHADOW; 

Or, The Resurrection oe Life 

n 

TURNING POINTS OF THOUGHT AND CONDUCT 

III 
THE LAW OF LIBERTY, 

And Other Discourses 

IV 

NEW POINTS TO OLD TEXTS 

V 
EARLY PUPILS OF THE SPIRIT; 

Or, The Ethical Development of 
the Prophets of Israel 

VI 
THE DIVINE SATISFACTION: 

A Review of What Should and 
What Should Not be Thought 
About the Atonement 

VII 
WHAT OF SAMUEL? 



For Notices and Prices of the above, see last page 



GLORIA PATRI 



OR 



OUE TALKS ABOUT THE TRINITY 



BY 



JAMES MORRIS WHITON, Ph.D. 



" <©ob is a circle, tobose centre is enernttinere, tobos'e 
circumference is nowbere." 



NEW YOKK 
THOMAS WHITTAKER 

2 and 3 Bible House 

1892 . 

TO 

SEP 1 



$Tw\ 



S^i# 



Copyright, 1892 
By THOMAS WHITTAKER 



C0e ecutfon (pre** 

1 7 I > T 73 Macdougal Street, New York 



AUTHOR'S NOTE. 



These pages have been written for thoughtful 
laymen. And yet it may be enough to deter such 
readers, that the subject presented is the Trinity. 
Cause enough has often been given for regarding 
this subject as too enigmatical, and too unrelated 
to daily uses, to attract the attention of busy men 
unschooled in theological mysteries. Until the 
contrary can be demonstrated by presenting it in a 
different light, any attempt to secure a keener in- 
terest in it among ordinary thinkers must rest un- 
der the unfavorable presumption which has been 
admitted. To such a demonstration it is hoped 
these pages may contribute something. To facili- 
tate the purpose in view, and to relieve the in- 
herent difficulties of the subject-matter, the some- 
what unusual form of dialogue has been adopted, 



AUTHOES NOTE. 

in which more or less of many conversations is re- 
corded. 

Sooner or later it must be, that the Church will 
reap rich harvests of spiritual thought and life 
from this now weed-grown field, so long left fal- 
low. It cannot be that this fundamental and all 
comprehending truth of Christianity will always be 
left in the cloud which barren scholastic contro- 
versy has raised about it. 



New York, May 10, 1892. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

I. Some Misapprehensions Cleared - 9 



II. The Son of God 35 

The Cause of Controversy - . - 45 

And the End of it 53 

III. The Word or Form of God ... 67 

And How to Think of the Incarnation - - 80 

IV. The Neglected Term of the Trinity - 101 

V. SUPERNATURALISM, FALSE AND TRUE - - 127 

The Trinitarian Test 136 

Theocentric Theology ----- 147 

Epilogue ------- 157 



I. 

SOME MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED 



" Jn bain J tutneti in toearp quest 
$I& page? tofrete (<!5otJ gite tfrem re£t) 
Cfre poor cttefcu-monger? fcreameti anfci ouejMefc." 

Whittier. 



L 

SOME MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED. 

We had a mild excitement at our church to- 
day, remarked our neighbor who dropped in to 
talk on a Sunday evening. 

Mild excitement, said I, is a thing that most 
church-goers are grateful for. It keeps them 
awake. 

In this case it promises to keep us awake for 
a few days at least, on a subject not usually excit- 
ing, in fact, the Trinity. 

Ah, tell us how it happened. 

Why, right in the middle of the morning sermon, 
Madam Sandy, our old minister's widow, who 
seems to have taken a contract to see that his opin- 
ions are not departed from, sniifed heresy in the 
air, and marked her protest against it by straight- 
way stalking out of church. 

That was rather exciting. But are you sure it 



10 MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED. 

was not a sudden faintness perhaps, or nausea, that 
took her out ? 

Quite unlikely. I asked Dr. Wise, her family- 
physician, why he didn't follow her out to offer 
assistance. He said he took a good look at her 
face as she walked by his pew, and saw that it was 
a case of fire, not of faintness. 

Pray what had your minister said that fired her 
up? 

Well, as I intimated, his discourse touched on 
the Trinity. Dr. Sandy used to be very rigid on 
that. He used to represent it as a doctrine indis- 
pensable to salvation, and all Unitarians as left to 
the uncovenanted mercies of God. Now, right in 
the teeth of that, our minister quoted, with ap- 
proval, a remark by the church-historian, Neander, 
to the effect that the Trinity was not a fundamental 
doctrine of Christianity. Madam waited not to 
hear more, but fled the place at once. 

Well, that was rather an undesirable show of 
ancient manners. It used to be more common to 
testify dissent in that fashion than it is now. 

Yes, and the old-time come-outer liked to bang 
his pew door after him by way of emphasis. It 
was rather a testy way of bearing testimony. I 
think it requires more grace to sit decorously quiet 
under a speech that you dislike. 



MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED. 11 

I remember a ease where it would have been far 
better so to do. I was once present where an am- 
ateur theologian made himself rather ridiculous by 
a rash exit. The sermon was making him quite 
uneasy, but he chose an unfortunate moment to 
break away. The preacher had begun to quote 
from the sleep-walking scene in Macbeth, when, 
just as he repeated the words, u Out ! Out ! 
damned spot ! " the malcontent arose and left. 

That was a comical coincidence. But now I 
should like to know what you think of the state- 
ment that produced this morning's explosion, 
namely, that the Trinity is not a fundamental doc- 
trine of Christianity. 

Why, it is certainly true in the sense in which 
Neander said it. He was speaking of the specula- 
tive, metaphysical form which the doctrine has as- 
sumed in theology. But he speaks very differ- 
ently of the devotional and practical form in which 
the Scriptures present it, as in the baptismal form- 
ula, and in the apostolic benediction. In regard 
to this, he says : " We recognize therein the essen- 
tial contents of Christianity summed up in brief." * 

Well, I suppose it is essential not only to sum 
up in brief, but also to unfold and define these con- 

* General History of the Christian Religion and Church, 12th 
edition, p. 572, 573. 



12 MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED. 

tents, so as to understand just what the words mean. 
I mean, of course, essential for thinking men. 
But this is just where one quickly gets into water 
too deep for him. At least, I do. The simplest 
definition that I have found is in our Westminster 
Catechism : " There are Three Persons in the God- 
head, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy 
Ghost, and these Three are One God, the same in 
substance, equal in power and glory." But even 
this takes me a step beyond the limit between 
knowledge and mystery, and leaves me where it is 
impossible to form any clear conception of the 
fact. 

I suppose that this is the common experience. 
The fact that it is so common ought to suggest the 
question, whether so general a failure may not be 
due to some following of a mistaken line of 
thought into a sort of blind alley, a theological 
cut de sae. I doubt whether there is such a thing 
as a right line of rational thought which ends in 
intellectual confusion. 

You speak as if you think there might be a way 
out of the labyrinth. 

I think there must be. The Holy Scripture as- 
serts on one hand the unity of God, and on the 
other hand ascribes Divinity alike to the Father, 
the Son, and the Spirit. There must be some line 



MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED. 13 

of thought in which the attempt we are bound to 
make to harmonize these two classes of statements 
will not end in impenetrable mystery, but in a 
clear vision of the truth. 

Well, I cannot say this is incredible, but after 
so many centuries of effort by the greatest intel- 
lects, it seems improbable. 

I cannot think it so. " To seek the head of the 
Nile " was to the ancient world a proverb for a 
hopeless quest. But the Nile has in our day 
yielded up its secret. You must remember that 
modern learning has given us resources for theo- 
logical exploration far beyond what the ancients, 
or even our grandfathers, possessed. Besides, even 
in this Trinitarian problem, we have a historical 
precedent for warranting some hopefulness in a 
fresh attack upon it. Never were there keener or 
stronger thinkers than the Greek theologians of the 
fourth century, who first formulated Trinitarian 
thought in the creed of Nicsea. And yet the 
Latins of the ninth century gave an extension to 
the Trinitarianism of the fourth century which has 
been accepted by all the Western churches. Why 
is it unlikely that the nineteenth century may also 
give the old line a new extension ? 

Well, it would have to be something new to be 
of much interest to me. I have become weary of 



14 3IISAPPBEHENSI0XS CLEARED. 

preachers threshing the old straw in vain attempts 
to define the indefinable and explain the inexpli- 
cable. I confess I was rather glad to hear our min- 
ister quote so orthodox an authority as Xeander for 
my idea that the Trinity is no fundamental part of 
Christian doctrine. I am afraid that I am not 
much of a Trinitarian, though I am a member of 
Trinity Church. I have about given it up in my 
own mind as a piece of old time speculation of not 
much practical value nowadays. 

I regret that so great a name as Neander should 
seem to endorse that unbalanced statement, which 
he himself carefully restricted to the metaphysical 
form of the doctrine. Did not your minister go 
on to tell you so ? 

I suppose he did. He went on with Neander's 
views, but Madam Sandy's performance so broke 
me up that my attention let go. 

That was too bad. These rash zealots for what 
they call orthodoxy always mar matters more than 
they mend them. Why, man, Neander goes on to 
say, as your minister must have added, that the 
Trinity belongs to the " proper and fundamental 
essence of Christianity." That is precisely my 
thought about it. I am as far as can be from 
your notion, that it is an antiquated, profitless bit 
of speculative theology. To me it is just the oppo- 



MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED. 15 

site — the most comprehensive, vital, and invigorat- 
ing of all Christian truths, a very truth of truths, 
in touch with Christian thought, feeling, and 
action, at every point of the whole circle of life. 
If you fancy you are not much of a Trinitarian, I 
think I can show you that you are on the wrong 
track. Let me be your switchman to another line 
of thought, and I dare say you will come to a very 
different conclusion. 

Well, you seem so sanguine that perhaps I 
ought to let you try. At least I shall be inter- 
ested to know how it is that you have got on to 
your mountain-top of solid rock and unclouded 
vision, while I have got into such a foggy swamp. 
I think I shall rather enjoy an hour in comparing 
notes. You are the first man who has piqued me 
with a fresh interest in re-opening the subject. 

"Will you tell me what made you give it up as 
closed ? 

Why, I went with it one day to our old minis- 
ter, Dr. Sandy, who used to preach on it now and 
then. " How/' said I, " can three Persons be one 
God ? " He replied that the Three were indeed 
persons, as distinct from each other as Peter, 
James, and John, but that they were, notwith- 
standing, one in the unity of a common divine 
nature, as Peter, James, and John are one in the 



16 MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED. 

unity of a common human nature. Now, to my 
mind, that means three Gods as really as it means 
three men. 

I do not wonder at your rejecting such a notion, 
though I might wonder that a minister holding 
such a grotesque fancy can hold his place in a 
church so scrupulous for orthodoxy as your Pres- 
byterians are. It only illustrates what Dr. Bush- 
nell said long ago, that there was a so-called or- 
thodoxy which was " a mere tritheistic compost," 
and more careful to insist on the Threeness than to 
guard the Unity of God. But do not mistake such 
a caricature for the reality. Let me relate my an- 
ecdote in turn. Some years ago a friend of mine 
was put out of Presbyterian fellowship for a theo- 
logical error. He concentrated the entire Deity in 
the One Person of Christ, and regarded the tenet 
of the Three Persons as an empty speculation. 
Soon after he was disfellowshipped he happened to 
meet Dr. Bellows, the minister of All Souls Uni- 
tarian Church, in New York, who greeted him 
thus : " Ah, Mr. X., I am very sorry to hear that 
you no longer believe in the Trinity. But I want 
to tell you that I do believe in the Trinity." 

That is a good story, but what did he, a Unita- 
rian, mean? 

Not that he believed in the Trinity as understood 



MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED. 17 

by Mr. X's prosecutors, but merely that lie ac 
cepted the Biblical Trinity as he understood it. So 
do very many Unitarians. They divide from us 
in their philosophy rather than in their faith. You 
will hear them joining in that ancient chant to the 
Trinity which we call the Te Deum ; or you will 
hear them use the Trinitarian apostolic benedic- 
tion in public worship : The grace of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the commu- 
nion of the Holy Ghost be with you all. 

That is all very well. Nevertheless, Dr. Bel- 
lows would not have consented to be classed as a 
Trinitarian, because that term is monopolized by 
men of a different way of thinking, and that is 
just my difficulty. 

Why is it any more of a difficulty in your case 
than in mine? The Trinity, as I understand it, is 
the fundamental article of my faith, yet I utterly 
dissent from the Trinitarian notions of your Dr. 
Sandy. Pray, do you imagine that if you should 
get at the opinions of the first dozen Trinitarian 
ministers you might converse with, you would find 
them identical ? Nay, you would find them vary 
in every case. Let me ask if you have not ob- 
served that, while " Trinity Church " is a very 
common name, a Trinity sermon is a very rare 
thing. 



18 MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED. 

I have, indeed, heard very few such, and never 
one that did not perplex and weary me. 

The reason is, that the subject perplexes the ser- 
monizers also. It is a wide-spread feeling among 
them that the Trinity is better adapted to the theo- 
logical lecture room than to the pulpit. They are 
very shy of it. The Episcopal Church, indeed, 
has its " Trinity Sunday," but with reference to that 
an Oxford man once said to me, " We have dropped 
the Trinity in England, except once a year." In 
my view it is a sad plight to be in, but it is the 
natural recoil from the blind alley where specula- 
tion on an impracticable line has proven that there 
is no way out. Meanwhile, as you might expect, 
Trinitarian opinion is in a very chaotic state. The 
average preacher clings to the biblical formula, be- 
yond which he dimly apprehends a tri-personal 
mystery which he names the Trinity, but regards 
as inexplicable. Others go on to explain and de- 
fine, and their opinions will vary all along the line 
from Tritheism to Sabellianism — that is, from 
three Gods, who somehow are One, to three 
temporary agencies of One God, who, for the 
purpose of our redemption, acts as both Father 
and Son and Spirit. You may be sure, then, 
that if you think the name of Trinitarian would 
bind you to any one clear-cut and universally 



MIS. 1 PPREHENSIONS CLE. I RED. 19 

received idea of the Trinity, you have miscon- 
ceived the tads. 

How that can be I cannot understand. The 
Nicene Creed was framed for the express purpose of 
shutting out Unitarians, who did not object to the 
Apostles' Creed. If so, there is at least one clear- 
cut, comprehensive formula, which all varieties of 
Trinitarians unite in, and by which they are dis- 
tinguished from Unitarians. 

It will still more surprise you to hear that it is 
not quite so. On the contrary, one of my friends, 
a leader among Unitarians, has told me that he 
prefers the Xieene Creed to the Apostles' Creed. 
Nor have I the least doubt, either of his sincerity 
or of his dissent from what is popularly called 
Trinitarianism. Let me repeat the Nicene state- 
ments concerning Christ which my Unitarian friend 
accepts : 

" One Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son 
of God, begotten of His Father before all worlds, 
God of God, Light of Light, very God of very 
God, begotten, not made, being of one substance 
with the Father." 

He repeated these very phrases to me, and added, 
" I believe this with all my heart." 

Well, that is passing strange. How can any 
Unitarian believe that ? Do you understand it ? 



20 MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED. 

I think I do, for I have often reflected on it as 
a proof of the inadequacy of fixed theological form- 
ulas to meet the shifting exigencies of advancing 
thought. The reason that a Unitarian can accept 
such statements now, diough they were framed ex- 
pressly to exclude the old-time Unitarians, is that 
the Nicene ideas concerning human nature as being 
different in kind from the divine nature, have be- 
gun to change, and both Trinitarians and Unitari- 
ans are coming to agree in regarding human nature 
as essentially one with the divine. It is in the 
line of this changed view of human nature that I 
believe we are to find whatever solution of the 
Trinitarian problem is to be hoped for. 

Please explain. This is something really new 
to me. 

Well, then, to be as brief as clearness permits, 
Athanasius, who was the leader of the Trinitarian 
party in the fourth century, and by whose influ- 
ence the Nicene formulas were shaped, held that 
there is an essential difference of nature between 
man and God. He says : " We were fashioned 
out of the earth. He [the Son of God] is by na- 
ture and substance Word and true God . . . The 
Word has real and true identity of nature with 
the Father, but to us it is given to imitate it. . . . 
We by imitation become virtuous and sons." 



MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED. 21 

Such was the dominant conception of human na- 
ture when the Niccne formula put forth, as the 
the test of orthodox Trinitarianism, its famous 
word, homoousioSy which affirms " the same sub- 
stance " to belong to God and to Christ, as the 
Father and the Son. On that one word Trini- 
tarians and Unitarians parted irreconcilably. 

But is it a fact that that w T ord no longer parts 
them ? 

It is. Some years since, Dr. F. H. Hedge, in 
a printed essay, declared the adoption of that test 
word, homoousios, by the Council of Nicsea to have 
been a grand victory of Christian truth. Not long 
since, in a conversation on the Trinity, I quoted 
Dr. Hedge's remark to an English theologian. 
He could not understand it at all, and asked if 
Dr. Hedge was speaking in a Pickwickian sense. 

No wonder he asked you that. It is all dark 
to me. 

But it will not be, if you reflect on this : That 
the core of humanity is its moral and spiritual 
nature. Though man, as he appears on earth, is 
composed of " spirit, soul, and body " (according 
to Paul's account), the loss of the earthly body, at 
death, leaves us no less human than before. This 
shows that the flesh is a mere temporary accident, 
as logicians say, of our humanity, while the spirit 



22 MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED. 

is its permanent essence. Now in this spiritual 
core of human nature Christ was certainly of the 
same nature as we, loving, praying, tempted, suf- 
fering, rejoicing, as a man among men. But moral 
and spiritual nature, whether divine or human, must 
be of one and the same kind, however varying in 
development. To deny this is to unsettle the 
very foundations of conscience. Were spiritual 
nature of different kinds, then goodness, truth, 
justice and all spiritual qualities might be dif- 
ferent in man and God, and Jesus' saying, "Be ye 
perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect" would 
have no practical value as a reliable rule of life. 

Ah, I think I begin to understand. Dr. Hedge 
meant that in adopting the homoousios the men of 
Nicsea builded better than they knew. 

Of course. He did not mean to extol their deci- 
sion, with the limitations they gave it, as a finality, 
but he accepted it as a basis for subsequent thought 
to proceed upon. They were very far from seeing 
what Dr. Hedge saw, and what Dr. Dale has lately 
said : " The Christian doctrine of man is implicated 
in the Christian doctrine of God, or to speak more 
exactly, in the Christian doctrine of the Trinity ; 
and the Christian doctrine of man determines the 
Christian theory of morals and the Christian theory 
of society."* Concentrating their thought on the 

* " Fellowship with Christ/' p. 158. 



MISAPPEEHENSIONS CLE. 1 RED. 23 

nature of Christ solely as related to God, and 
overlooking its relation to man, they took no ac- 
count of the fact that it was a nature equally one 
with humanity as with Deity. They failed to see 
that their favorite homoousios could not be appli- 
cable to Christ apart from the human race from 
which he sprang, and whose spiritual head he is. 
But now what they asserted for Christ alone Chris- 
tian thought goes logically forward to assert also 
for mankind, that the race is spiritually " of one 
substance with the Father." 

I grant you this was a great gain for humanity, 
though they failed to see it as we do. In establish- 
ing their position, of course, they established every- 
thing that logically follows from it, however long 
it might be before the logical conclusion came. No 
doubt it was, as Dr. Hedge says, a great victory 
for truth. 

Great, indeed, in view of its practical conse- 
quences for morality and religion. Only in this 
essential unity of all spiritual nature, whether 
divine or human, is there, as I was just now say- 
ing, any solid certainty for conscience that right- 
eousness is the same in man and in God, or any 
practicable and permanent moral rule for the en- 
deavor to think God's thoughts and to imitate 
God's ways. Just this I take to be the import of 



24 MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED. 

Dr. Dale's pregnant remark, that our doctrine of 
man, with our theories of morals and of society, is 
involved in our conception of the Trinity. And 
I now recall another remark of his in conversation, 
that " the truth of the Trinity is that from which 
we are to expect the most for the quickening and 
deepening of Christian life." 

You have given me an idea of the matter quite 
unlike anything I have conceived before. Indeed, 
I had fallen in with popular notions that I now 
begin to suspect as both narrow and superficial. It 
is too large a subject for us to finish in one inter- 
view, and I would like to think over what you have 
said. But you have given me the hope that there 
is a way out of the long controversy into a common 
understanding. On the one hand, it seems that 
Trinitarians vary among themselves, with no clear- 
cut understanding of the Three Persons. On the 
other, some Unitarians, at least, assent — of course 
with their own interpretation of the words — to the 
Nicene phrases that have till now been the very 
shibboleths of Trinitarians. This being so, it begins 
to look as if both parties might come together in a 
common view of the subject which will contain all 
of truth that they have separately contended for. 

You are not the only one who thinks so. I was 
talking one day with a circle" of devout Unitarians, 



MIS. I PPREHENSIONS CLEA RED. 25 

in a New England church, who expressed this very 
hope. Not long since a prominent Trinitarian min- 
ister in New England, who stands about midway 
between conservatives and liberals, said to me that 
the Unitarian schism, which took place about a 
century ago, could not have arisen, had the condi- 
tions of Christian thought been what they are to-day. 
Then there is Dr. Martineau, the leading English 
Unitarian. Have you heard of his essay, " A Way 
out of the Trinitarian Controversy ? " 

I have not. What does he say ? 

Comparatively few in this country seem to 
have read it. I am surprised that it has received 
so little attention among our theologians and relig- 
ious journalists. It is one of the most luminous 
and interesting contributions to the discussion of 
our subject. In brief, his position is that Trinita- 
rians and Unitarians have each been so snared in 
an illusion of words, that they have been blind to 
the fact that the Divine object of the faith of each is 
really one and the same, though differently named 
by each. The Unitarian worships the Father, the 
Trinitarian, the Son. " But," says Dr. Martineau, 
" He who is the Son in the one creed is the Father 
in the other, and the two [creeds] are agreed, not 
indeed by any means throughout, but in that which 
constitutes the pith and kernel of both faiths." 



26 MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED. 

Why, that is novel enough, and almost para- 
doxical. How does he make all that appear ? 

More easily than you think. The Father, says 
Dr. Martineau, is " God in his primeval essence ; " 
the Son is " God speaking out in phenomena and 
fact." In other words, the Father is Deity self- 
existent, absolute, unconditioned, the inscrutable 
source of all that is, the fathomless Mystery of 
original and eternal being, unknowable except as 
manifested in the things, events, and beings, that 
proceed from him. But God as thus manifested 
is not the Father who begets, but the Son who is 
begotten of Him. With this thought Dr. Mar- 
tineau thus addresses his Unitarian friends : 
" Everything that you can say to convey a just 
conception of your God — that he spread the heav- 
ens, that he guided Israel, that he dwelt in the 
Human Christ . . . you will discover registered 
among the characters of the Son. It is in him 
therefore, among the objects of your church-neigh- 
bor's faith, that your belief is placed ; . . . you 
omit the first Person, and begin with the second. 
. . . The Father ... is really absent from the Uni- 
tarian creed." 

But is not Dr. Martineau here putting a broader 
meaning to the term " Son " than will be generally 
allowed ? 



MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED. 27 

Very likely, yet not broader than the Scriptures 
allow, which regard all men as in the relation of 
sonship to God. " We are his offspring" said 
Paul to a pagan audience, quoting the words from 
a pagan poet. Nor is it any broader than reason 
requires. In the dominant evolutionary conception 
of science, all life is essentially one, and all life, 
being derived from God, is related to him as the 
filial to the paternal life. Yet, while this is so, 
we properly reserve the appellation of the Son to 
Christ, as the highest revelation of this filial life of 
the w r orld, w T hich is all from God. 

Well, you certainly are not threshing over any 
of the old straw. You have begun to give me 
fresh ideas on a subject w 7 here I thought there 
were none. Talk about the Trinity always seemed 
to me far away, and dry, and interesting only to 
folks that fancy hair-splitting on nice distinctions, 
appreciable only by doctors of divinity. But 
somehow it begins to look as if it might be closely 
connected with human life and the w r orld we live 
in. 

So it is, indeed. I think you will, in time, be 
profoundly convinced that the Trinity is not a 
truth for philosophers, any more than for all 
thoughtful men, and that it is in Christianity the 
very truth of truths, the richest of all in comfort 



28 MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED. 

and inspiration for heart and mind. If it has not 
been such hitherto, it is because of the crudeness 
of popular conceptions. It is a fact, as Dr. Mar- 
tineau says, that " many a disciple, unschooled in 
the fine distinctions of a Greek theology, thinks of 
the Father chiefly as the God prior to the plan of 
the Incarnation, of the Son as the historical figure, 
of the Holy Ghost as the agent sent on the day 
of Pentecost, to take the place of the ascended 
Christ. He fancies these acting each on the other 
as outside beings, and conducting a divine drama 
among themselves." Undoubtedly this is the no- 
tion which the Trinitarian cannot rationally ex- 
plain, and which the Unitarian cannot rationally 
accept. 

Yes, and that is just the notion which I have 
had, and which has made me say that I was not 
much of a Trinitarian. But I will not say that 
now. Not that the way is yet quite clear to me, 
but I see a likelihood of its becoming clear when- 
ever we can talk it through. 

I do not doubt that. I hope to make it not 
only as clear in your thought as it is in mine, but 
also as helpful to your religious life and spiritual 
needs as it has been to me. It is a deplorable 
mistake to fancy the Trinity to be a riddle which 
no one can solve, and, even if one could solve it, 



MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED. 29 

a tiling of no practical benefit, like the northwest 
passage to Asia, through the ice of the polar circle, 
hard to find, and useless when found. Such a 
Trinity there is, but it is the Trinity of scholastic 
metaphysicians. With their dry and mouldy bread 
we will have nothing to do. In place of that we 
shall come to a truth which gives sacredness to life, 
enthusiasm to philanthropy, patience and hope to 
mortal struggles, and glory to the world in which 
the Son and the Spirit show us the Presence and 
Power of the Father. 

I shall wait with eagerness for what you prom- 
ise me on this new line of thought. 

Pardon me, if I correct you. If it were wholly 
a new line of thought, I should distrust it. It is 
rather, as I have already suggested, an extension 
of an old line. As I intimated, when speaking of 
the homoousios, we are logically obliged to carry 
its application further than was done at Nicsea, 
and to claim for the race of man that oneness of 
spiritual nature with God which was there claimed 
only for the great " Son of man" Thus extending 
the Nioene line of thought, we shall find ourselves 
conducted by that larger conception of God, which 
the Scriptures in the light of evolutionary science 
reveal, to a conception of the Trinity, alike clear 
to reason, conformable to Scripture, precious to 



30 MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED. 

faith, and touching all the nerves of life with in- 
spiring and uplifting power. I have so proved 
this in my own experience, that I am always sorry 
when I hear a Christian man speak of the Trinity 
as more of a strain than a support to faith, and 
as an old time speculation which should be re- 
spectfully, but firmly, bowed out of our modern 
thought. Those who talk so seem to me like 
children who have not learned yet what an inheri- 
tance is theirs. 

It begins to dawn on me that the new theology, 
of which I have heard so much, might have sug- 
gested to me that it involved a new Trinitarianism, 
as well as new conceptions of the Bible, and of the 
Atonement, and of the future state of rewards and 
punishments. 

Yes ; those other questions, on which Christian 
thought has been so warmly engaged, important 
as they are, are really secondary to the question 
which they all at length refer us to, concerning 
the being of God, and his relation to the world. 
Now, as I shall hope to show you, that question 
finds its all inclusive answer in the truth of the 
Trinity, which is therefore the truth of truths. 
Biblical study has been freeing us from a crude 
understanding of the Scriptures in general, and 
from misinterpretation of texts in particular. The 



MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED. 31 

advance of science has revealed to us the unity of 
all life, and the evolution of life and all things in 
an orderly and everlasting process, outside of which 
not even the unique Person of Christ can now be ra- 
tionally placed. Thus we have been supplied with 
materials that were not available half a century 
ago for fresh thought as to God and his relation 
to the world. There must, therefore, be a fresh 
discussion of this ; that is to say, the Trinitarian 
question must be essayed again, with the fresh 
light that this age has found. The reasonable pre- 
sumption is, that we shall find ground, not only 
to hold to all the truth that the ancients reached, 
but to reach out from that to truth that is larger 
and more satisfying. The hopefulness of such a 
prospect is, that here will appear fruitful fields 
beyond the desert region we have wandered in, 
and Christian unanimity after so much barren con- 
troversy. 

I share your hope for that. It seems to me 
that the stubbornness of the Unitarian protest 
through all the centuries of reigning orthodoxy is 
most reasonably attributable, not to a perverse 
hostility to truths but to the necessarily divisive 
nature of conclusions that were but partially true. 

You are right there. When we get at the 
whole truth, we shall all be at one. 



II. 

THE SON OF GOD 

THE CAUSE OF CONTROVERSY 

AND THE END OF IT 



- ; Cfee Son # tbe Ultimo Will of tfre Jfatber," ' 

Athanasius. 



II. 

THE SON OF GOD. 

THE CAUSE OF CONTROVERSY 

AND THE END OF IT 

How does it seem to you now, said I, when we 
next found ourselves free for conversation. 

I have been thinking, he replied, that Dr. Mar- 
tineau's view of the Father and the Son may recon- 
cile more than the two parties he has especially in 
mind. 

How so ? 

It seems to me that it opens a way out of the 
agnostic difficulty as well as the Unitarian. I was 
talking, since we parted, with a friend who is one 
of the best of men, and leads a life of unselfish 
goodness that puts many who call themselves 
Christians into pitiful contrast. But he thinks 
that all thought given to theology is wasted, be- 
cause, as he says, the Infinite Being is utterly un- 
knowable. It has occurred to me that his unknow- 
able God corresponds with Dr. Martineau's con- 
ception of the Father as "God in his primeval 

35 



36 THE SON OF GOI>. 

essence." Of course this is unknowable to us — an 
absolute mystery. 

That it is and must be. What else do Christian 
thinkers mean when they speak of God as trans- 
cendant — that is, above and beyond the reach of 
thought? Yet this is the Father, the fathomless 
Fountain of our life, known only by what rises to 
the surface from the inscrutable depths. So much 
we freely concede to the agnostic. Jesus also con- 
cedes it. " Neither knoweth any man the Father 
save the Son, and he to whom the Son willeth to re- 
veal Him" 

Do you suppose that Jesus meant by this that 
He only, as the Son of God, makes known the 
Father, and that there is no revelation of the 
Father except through Him ? 

Neither the Scriptures nor the history of thought 
justifies so narrow an inference. Isaiah confessed, 
" Doubtless Thou art our Father" The Greek 
poet whom Paul quoted to the Athenians had 
divined the same truth. So did the Greek philos- 
ophers, especially the Platonists and the Stoics. 
What Jesus did was to reveal in its fulness the 
truth which His forerunners among Hebrew pro- 
phets and Gentile sages had but partially glimpsed. 

But did not Jesus say explicitly, " No man Com- 
eth unto the Father but by Me ? " 



THE SON OP GOD. 37 

Certainly, and yet we must not put a meaning 
on His words which would make them untrue to 
the facts. They point us along two lines of thought. 
One is, that no one comes to the full revelation of 
the Father except through the Christ of the Gos- 
pels. The other is, that no one has come to any reve- 
lation of the Father — such partial revelations as have 
been preparatory to that which He made by Christ — 
except through what there w r as of the Christ-spirit 
in the world before the historic appearance of 
Christ. What I have in mind is this : Before the 
historical Christ was born, the essential Christ had 
begun to appear, partially, of course, in a succes- 
sion of more or less Christly men. It was through 
such men — through what there was of Christ in 
them — that Hebrews and heathen had begun to 
come to the Father, before the advent of Christ 
with His perfect revelation. Similar experiences 
doubtless take place to-day. Why, this is what we 
see whenever a Christian mother teaches her little 
one to lisp " Our Father " for the first time. 

It must be so, I admit. And yet it is not the 
most obvious meaning of Christ's words. 

Perhaps not ; and yet what seem obvious mean- 
ings are often very superficial, and therefore falla- 
cious. When Jesus said, "All that came before Me 
are thieves and robbers" the obvious meaning, as 



38 THE SON OF GOD. 

one might say, was that there had been only false 
teaching in the world until His time. But He could 
not have meant that, for He was ever quoting Moses 
and the prophets. He meant only the false for- 
malists, who had ruled everything for a good while 
before Him. So we must not be misled to put an 
obvious fallacy in place of a deeper truth in what 
He says of the Father as revealed only by the Son. 

Well, then, since Jesus did not intend to say that 
the revelation of the Father is restricted to His 
historic person, what do you think is the full scope 
of His saying ? 

I do not see how it can be any thing narrower 
than this : The unseen can be known only by the 
seen which comes forth from it. The all-generating 
or Paternal Life, which is hidden from us, can be 
known only by the generated or Filial Life in which 
it reveals itself. The goodness and righteousness 
which inhabits eternity can be known only by the 
goodness and righteousness which issues from it in 
the successive births of time. God above the world 
is made known only by God in the world. God 
transcendant, the Father, is revealed by God im- 
manent, the Son. This revealing of the Father, 
which is the function of the Son, did not begin 
with Christ, as the Scripture itself and the history 
of religious thought and life demonstrate, but it was 



THE SON OF a 01). 39 

perfected by Christ. In our conception of " the 
Son " we must include, at least, all the more or less 
Christly men who lived before Christ, for in them 
also was the Spirit of the Son. Thus it is clear 
that what Christ claims He claims specially, but 
not exclusively, for that would be falsely. 

I see it must be so. Any narrower interpreta- 
tion of His words would put Him in contradiction 
to historical facts. And it seems quite clear, in the 
view you take, that we must give a wider sense to 
the Trinitarian term, Son, than either Trinitarians 
or Unitarians have thus far generally recognized. 

Indeed we must. It has been formally restricted 
to the historical person of Christ. But in reality 
it must be extended to include the whole of that 
Eternal Manifestation by which Transcendent 
Deity — the unknown God of the agnostic, the hid- 
den Father of the Trinitarian — is revealed as im- 
manent, in all, as well as above all, indwelling in 
His works, in the life of man, and most fully in 
Jesus Christ. When He at length appears it is as 
the Son of God, pre-eminently such, but not exclu- 
sively. 

That I take to be Dr. Martineau's view. The 
Son, also called in Scripture the Word, is, as he 
says, " God speaking out in phenomena and fact." 
But if a Unitarian will agree to that, will he find 



40 THE SON OF GOD. 

Trinitarians disposed to go with him in giving this 
larger meaning to their traditional formula, " God 
the Son?" 

Not all at once. Many have such crude concep- 
tions of God, and of what personality is — especially 
the divine and perfect personality, which they gen- 
erally confound with the individuality, or separate- 
ness of existence, which we see in the fragmentary 
personality of man — that it will be only gradually 
that a more spiritual theology can prevail. But 
already Dr. Martineau's solution has been greeted 
with a Trinitarian welcome. An orthodox Scotch 
reviewer quotes Dr. Martineau's statement, " His 
Word [also called Son] is as eternal as Himself," 
and says that " this is a c platform ? of preliminary 
agreement never reached before." He says that 
with " Eternal Sonship " as a basis for further dis- 
cussion, a great advance has been made on the old 
Unitarianism, and a hope opened " that the breach 
made in the third century may be healed in our 
times." 

Stay a moment; please make this unfamiliar 
phrase, " Eternal Sonship," as clear as may be. 

Most willingly, though it takes us for a few mo- 
ments into rather deep waters. It was in the fourth 
century the turning point of the Trinitarian dis- 
cussions, and has come to be so again, though, as 



THE SON OF GOD. 41 

you see, with a wider meaning than then. The 
contention of the Catholics against the Arians (the 
representative Unitarians at Nicsea) was, that the 
Son was eternal, and uncreated, and really Son, not 
merely so called. Of course they did not use 
"Son" in a physical sense, but in a metaphysical. 
But by it they meant to express symbolically two 
truths of the utmost practical consequence. And 
here we shall see what in our scientific times is con- 
stantly illustrated — that the refined researches of 
students connect closely with the needs of working- 
men. By the Eternal Sonship, which, as I have 
said, they unduly restricted to the pre-existent 
Christ, the early Trinitarians sought to meet two 
requirements of all seekers after God. We need to 
know, first, that the inscrutable Deity has not with- 
drawn Himself from human cognizance, and next, 
that it is no go-between or undivine messenger, but 
God Himself, who brings us knowledge of God. 

These are, indeed, truths of supreme moment. 
But I do not at once see how the notion of Eternal 
Sonship carries them. 

It will be quite clear to you as soon as you 
put it in connection with two simple propositions 
which you will readily grant : first, that it is the 
very nature of a father to have a son ; next, that 
a son is identical in nature with his father. Ac- 



42 THE SON OF GOD. 

cordingly, applying these correlative terms, Father 
and Son, to God (in a symbolical and metaphysical 
sense, of course), they meant by " Eternal Sonship," 
first, that it is of the very nature of Deity to issue 
forth into visible expression. Thus they secured 
Paul's faith, that God has never left Himself with- 
out witness. They meant, next, that this outward 
expression of God is not something other than God, 
but God Himself in a self-expression as divine as is 
the hidden Deity. Thus they answered Philip's 
cry, " Show us the Father and it sufficeth us" and 
thus they affirmed Jesus' declaration, "He that 
hath seen Me hath seen the Father." However 
speculative and metaphysical you may have deemed 
their thought, I think the practical value of it is 
perfectly apparent. 

Indeed it is. Not, however, unless we take 
away the limitation of the word " Son," which was 
imposed upon them by their idea of human nature 
as essentially undivine. Giving that term the exten- 
sion which you give it, it does not leave God out- 
side of the world and far above it, but recognizes 
Him as an inhabitant of it, animating it from with- 
in, pervading it throughout, with us and in us, a 
partaker of all human life, as well as dwelling with 
men in His Christ. 

Yes, and that is not all. Many scientific men 



THE SOX OF GOD. 43 

have rejected Christianity because they fancy that 
Divine Revelation is somehow an interference with 

the uniform order of nature. Indeed, the mediaeval 
style of Christian thought that still is popular has 
given them cause for this misunderstanding. But 
the early Trinitarianism was far wiser. The Eter- 
nal Sonship attests that Revelation is not an after- 
thought, nor an interposition, but a part of the order 
of things ; nay, it is- the eternal order. It is of the 
very nature of Deity to issue forth in self-expres- 
sion. Athanasius constantly illustrates this idea by 
his favorite comparison of the relation of the Father 
and the Son to that of a luminary and its rays. 
" Who can imagine," he says, " that the radiance 
of light ever was not ? " 

You have made the point quite clear. May we 
not depend upon it also in other matters, that what 
is truest spiritually is also truest scientifically ? 

I believe it to be so. There is no real conflict 
between Reason and Revelation. President Hop- 
kins once made a memorable remark about this : 
Christianity and perfect Reason are identical. 
AVhatever is not perfect Reason is no part of Chris- 
tianity. 

Well, you have thus far made it plain that what 
I once thought a subject of mere misty and profit- 
less speculation, is not only clearly intelligible and 



44 THE SON OF GOD. 

reasonable, but vitally helpful to the practical 
ends of spiritual life. And yet I have heard a 
New England minister, who supposed himself an 
orthodox Trinitarian, declare that the eternal gen- 
eration of the Son " was eternal nonsense." You 
can hardly wonder at the prejudice that I was 
under when I first began to talk with you. 

That is no wonder. What Dr. Bushnell, in re- 
ply to those who accused him of Unitarianism, 
called " the dilapidated and provincial orthodoxy 
of New England," is responsible for no small 
amount of skepticism, out of which thinkers better 
acquainted with catholic Trinitarianism are en- 
deavoring to lead the way. I believe that ordi- 
nary Unitarianism, at present, largely supports 
itself on its protests against a crude and mechanical 
Trinitarianism which is beginning to dissolve. 
And I see no reason to differ with Dr. Martineau, 
when he says, " Let the advocates pf both faiths 
compare them from this point of view [that is, 
that ' He who is the Son in the one creed, is the 
Father in the other '], with mind open, not to 
words only, but to the real thoughts they contain, 
and with temper sensitive to sympathy rather than 
to divergency, and there is hope that we may yet 
all come into the unity of faith, and true knowl- 
edge of the Son of God." 



THE CAUSE OF CONTROVERSY. 45 

I am sure that all will unite with him in his 

hope and effort to realize it, who prize truth more 
than party, and believe, as every truth seeker 
must, that there is some truth which he has not 
yet attained to. But the " way out " does not 
yet seem to be really so short and simple as Dr. 
Martineau's account of it is. There is a difficulty 
which I feel, yet can poorly express. It comes be- 
fore me in the form of a question : How could so 
long and bitter a controversy ever have arisen ? 
The lines of it were first clearly drawn in the 
fourth century. But it was rising as far back as 
the close of the apostolic age. I believe it is gen- 
erally admitted that in the Jewish section of the 
primitive church Unitarian views largely ob- 
tained. And even after the Council of Nicaea, 
was it not long before the Trinitarian ascendency 
there won was permanently established ? 

Yes, the persecutions which Athanasius, as the 
head of the Trinitarian interest, underwent for forty 
years afterward are attested by the phrase that has 
become proverbial, "Athanasius against the world/' 

Very well. Xow this is my question : What 
was the cause of this obstinate struggle ? What 
difficulty was at the root of it? Has this root of 
opposition been removed ? If not, then, it seems 
to me, we are not any nearer " the way out." 



46 THE CAUSE OF CONTROVERSY. 

I agree with you. Let us first identify the root, 
and next we will see whether it has been taken 
away, or seems likely to be. 

Well, what do you think was the cause of con- 
troversy ? 

It was precisely the same which now parts the 
ordinary Trinitarian and Unitarian — a difference 
about the relation of Christ to God, a difference 
which I have already referred to as likely to be 
done away with by a change of view as to the re- 
lation of man to God in a common spiritual na- 
ture. From then till now, the doctrine of the 
Trinity has served mainly as a pedestal for the 
deity of Christ. It is not far from true to say 
that a Trinitarian minister may hold what view he 
pleases as to the Trinity, provided he fully admits 
the deity of Christ. The interest of Trinitarians 
has been, and is, more in the statue than in its ped- 
estal. Hence the wealth of phraseology with 
which Christ's deity is affirmed in the creed of 
Nicsea, and its confession of the Divine Triad, 
in which the Son appears as the central personage. 
The whole labor -of Trinitarian ism then was for 
this close identification of Christ's nature with 
God's. And, as Dr. Hedge tells us, we have rea- 
son to be thankful for their success in it. I think 
I can show you, however, that it has for modern 



THE CAUSE OF CONTROVERSY. 47 

thought a still larger scope, but I cannot speak of 
that till by and by. 

I have observed that the Xicene creed has com- 
paratively little to say about the Father and the 
Holy Ghost. 

True ; room is left there for us moderns to add 
something for our needs, as your remark about the 
agnostic difficulty suggested. But then there was 
less need, perhaps less power than now, for any 
greater explicitness on these points. The special 
exigency of that time was to set forth the Scriptural 
truth as to the nature of Christ. If the Creed gives 
special emphasis to that point, it seemingly follows 
the New Testament in so doing. What a wealth 
of such texts the creed-makers found, as this of 
Paul's, " In him [Chrisf] direlleth all the fulness of 
the Godhead bodily;" — and this of John's, " The 
Word was in the beginning with God. and iceis God, 
and became fleshy and we beheld His glory , as of the 
only begotten from the Father" With these com- 
pare the Xicene phrases, " God of God, Light of 
Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, 
being of one substance with the. Father." 

Yes, I admit that the Creed is scriptural, not 
scholastic ; it contains none of the stumbling blocks 
of the schools about the "three Persons," and the 
" two natures." But why, then, if both parties 



48 THE CAUSE OF CONTROVERSY. 

were united in believing the Scriptures, should they 
have divided upon such a creed ? 

The radical difficulty was this. The Arians 
could not believe that infinite Deity was subjected, 
as in Christ, to human limitations. On the tes- 
timony of the Scriptures, they held Christ to be 
divine, but they held divinity to be a thing of 
degrees, and Christ's divinity not in the highest 
rank, but such only as a created being might lay 
claim to, like, but not the same, with God in nature, 
or substance — terms, by the way, nearly equivalent. 
The Athanasians, on the contrary, contended that 
when the Scripture said, " the Word was God," 
there was no qualification to be added. Christ's 
nature was uncreated, and identical with God's. 
This identity of nature they expressed by the test- 
word we have already spoken of. The Arians 
said that Christ was homoiousios, "of like sub- 
stance" to God. The Athanasians said homoou- 
sios, "of the same substance." They differed, as 
Carlyle said with a sneer, only upon a single letter, 
but that letter was the small hinge on which the 
door of a great truth opened. 

Yes, I can see that only in regarding God and 
Christ as of the same nature can we think of God 
as not parted from man, and unapproachable, but 
as united, at least in one point, with our humanity, 



THE CAUSE OF OONTBOVEB&Y. 49 

(1 in Christ, at least, immediately accessible to 



us 



Exactly so; and this explains the pertinacity with 
which the Trinitarian party insisted on the test- 
word, homoousios. It was because, as Dr. Dale 
has observed, " the ultimate — the spiritual — ques- 
tion at issue was, whether God is a God nigh at 
hand." 

Well, now for my question : Has the under- 
lying cause of the whole struggle been at all re- 
moved, so as to give place to some hope of end- 
ing controversy? 

It seems so to me, and for this reason. The 
ground of controversy was furnished by the belief 
held in common by both parties, that human na- 
ture was essentially of a different kind from the 
divine. You remember my quotation to that 
effect from Athanasius : " We were fashioned out of 
the earth. He [Christ] is by nature and substance 
Word and true God." This assumed difference 
of natures made it impossible for Arians to see 
how real Deity could share such humiliation and 
suffering as Christ's. The Athanasians on the 
other hand were content to accept the Scriptural 
testimony that God Himself had so done. They 
took the Pauline saying, " God was in Christ" in 
its strict and unqualified sense. But, later, this 



50 THE CAUSE OF CONTROVERSY. 

difference of natures, about which nothing appears 
in the Nicene Creed, had to be fully stated. 

I would like to know exactly when and how. 

At the Council of Chalcedon, a.d. 451. This 
not only reaffirmed the Nicene statement that 
Christ was of the same substance \homoousios] with 
the Father, but added that He was also of the same 
substance \_homoousios] with man : " Consubstan- 
tial with the Father according to the Godhead, 
and consubstantial with us according to the man- 
hood ... to be acknowledged in two natures. 

Two " natures," then, seems, as you said, to mean 
about the same as two " substances." 

Very nearly. By " nature " is meant the sub- 
stance as manifest in its proper powers and qual- 
ities. This is the term used in the modern ver- 
sion of the statement of Chalcedon, w r hich you have 
in the Westminster Confession, that Christ " was, 
and continues to be God and man in two distinct 
natures, and one Person forever." Now this set- 
tlement has always been protested against, in the 
name of reason, though not always according to 
reason, from that day to this, and it cannot be re- 
garded as a final settlement. 

But has not the most devout and godly part of 
the church always accepted it ? 

It has ; but why ? For the indispensable truth 



THE CAUSE OF CONTROVERSY. 51 

which it contains, thai " very God," no created and 
inferior being, is "in Christy reexmdiing the world 
unto JEmself" A God who is near, not a far off 
Deity, is a necessity of spiritual life. Conse- 
quently, Christian thought has specially insisted 
on the truly divine nature of Christ. 

But has not orthodox Trinitarianism recognized 
Him as having also a truly human nature ? 

Yes, this has been formally recognized in creeds, 
but in fact it has not been so. The emphasis has 
been altogether put on the other side. Insisting 
on the unbiblical formula, " Christ was God," 
theologians have dropped the qualifying Biblical 
phrase, " the man Christ Jesus" From early times 
till recently, the so-called orthodox idea of Christ 
has so sunk His humanity in His Deity, as to rec- 
ognize in Him little more than the show of man- 
hood. 

But it is not so now, is it ? 

No; the effort of Christian thought in recent 
years has been to do justice to the neglected truth 
of the manhood of Christ, the neglect of which has 
cost the church dear through the one-sided super- 
naturalism that it has fostered, as in the sacerdotal 
ideas of salvation by sacraments, and the scholastic 
ideas of salvation by dogmas — from both of which 
most of the skepticism in Christendom has come. 



THE CAUSE OF CONT&OVEBSY, 

The human life of Christ has been studied for a 
generation as never before, . This, at least, has 

been a happy result of the long- Unitarian protest. 

In this point, as I should judge from some ser- 
mons on the humanity of Christ that I have heard 
in 'Trinitarian churches, the two parties have come 
to some agreement. 

It is so ; they are very largely now at one in 
recognizing Him whom Paul calls u The image of 
the invisible God" Him whom Paul also calls kk The 
mail Christ Jesus" as a man thoroughly, with all 
the essential limitations of human nature, but with- 
out any of its accidental stain and sin. In fact, it 
is beginning to be felt that in Christ there is not 
only more of God than is elsewhere seen, but also 
more of man. Christ is not only more divine than 
any one of us ; He is also more human. This, as 
you see, points to the truth we have already in- 
sisted on, that Deity and Humanity are not two na- 
tures, but one. 

Yes, but now how does this tend to the removal 
of the old rock on which the parties split ? 

In this way : this study of humanity, as seen in 
its perfection in Christ, has run parallel with and 
auxiliary to the development of a better psychology 
— that is, a better account of what human nature 
is. For a right idea of this it seems a thing of 



THE END OF C0NTE0VE1 

course thai we should study human natui 
best, not merely in it depraved conditions. Thi . 
wit 1 j other considerations, has led many thin 
both parties to break with the ruling idea of the 
past, and the underlying ground of their long dis- 
sension, that our nature is in its essence undivine 
and different from God's. 

I see how the study of manhood as it appears in 
Christ would tend that way. But you referred to 
" other considerations/' 

We were speaking of such in our previous con- 
versation, especially of this: That the moral and 
spiritual element, which is the essential core of hu- 
manity, must be identical in nature with the moral 
and spiritual essence of Deity, else we could have 
no certainty that righteousness in man is the same 
kind of thing that it is in God. Only on this 
ground, as I have before said, ean we find any im- 
mutable basis for morality, or any logical and prac- 
tical ground for Paul's exhortation, "Be ye imita- 
tors of God, as beloved children" 

Yes, I remember; and that took hold of me so 
that J am eager to know what more you have to 
add to it. 

Let me answer by asking you if you have ever 
leh a practical difficulty in recognizing Christ as 
the pattern Man, whom we are bound to copy? 



54 THE END OF CONTROVERSY. 

I own that I have. When it has been put to 
me in sermons that I ought to overcome my temp- 
tations as Christ overcame His, the appeal has 
been somewhat neutralized by the thought that 
Christ could, because He was God as well as man, 
while I have no such advantage. 

That is just the palsying effect which the fallacy 
of " two natures " in Christ produces in a great 
many who hear the inspiring appeal of the Apostles 
to Christ as our example, the ideal of Christian as- 
piration. When men think that in Christ God 
was allied with man in a kind of union forever un- 
attainable by any other son of man, not all, but the 
majority, feel that the obligation is weakened by 
the impossibility. Hence a good deal of moral 
negligence shelters itself under the idea which your 
Westminster divines have expressed : " No mere 
man since the fall is able perfectly to keep the com- 
mandments of God." Here again you see there is 
a moral exigency for recognizing the unity of the 
divine and human. If Christ is to be our leader, 
and we His followers, in the struggle for righteous- 
ness, then He and we must be on the common 
ground of one nature, He with no advantage of 
indwelling Deity that is essentially impossible to 
us. 

I see this clearly. Now, as I understand you, 



THE END OF CONTROVERSY. 55 

the two parties are approaching agreement in the 
view that there is but one spiritual nature, and that 
this may be indifferently spoken of as divine or 
human. 

Yes ; divine on the infinite side ; human on the 
finite. 

Furthermore, you say that this one nature be- 
longs equally to God, to Christ, and to mankind, 
and that in this fact is grounded the immutableness 
of moral distinctions, and the possibility of moral 
progress. 

Yes ; and now I think you see how it is that 
Unitarians are to-day found who accept the Nicene 
affirmations of the deity of Christ, and take its 
test word, homoousios, as true, not for Christ 
alone, but for the whole race to which He 
belongs. 

I do, and I see how all who, with Dr. Hedge, 
insist on the strict humanity of Christ, may join 
him in thinking that the Xicene theologians builded 
better than they knew, and gained a great victory 
for truth, when they made the homoousios a point 
of the catholic faith. But tell me now, what ob- 
jection can Trinitarians make to agreement in these 
views ? 

Speaking as a Trinitarian myself, I can see no 
reasonable objection, since in these views Christ 



56 THE END OF CONTROVERSY. 

appears to be all divine, as well as all human. 
But this conception was long ago reached by Lu- 
theran Trinitarians in their " Formula of Con- 
cord " (a.d. 1576), affirming that Christ is God 
when He dies, and man when He judges the dead. 
This thoroughly accords with Christ's thought, 
"The Father is in Me and I in Him; " "The Father 
that dwelleth in Me He doeth the works." Christ's 
way of speaking requires us to think of Him not 
as God and man, but as God in man, and man in 
God. 

But will not Trinitarians object that according 
to these views we are all God, and that this is 
Pantheism ? 

Not with good reason. It certainly is not Pan- 
theism. Pantheism not only holds that God is in 
all things, but that God is nothing more than a 
name for the sum of all things. Pantheism recog- 
nizes God as no more than immanent, that is, in- 
dwelling in all things. Christianity recognizes 
this also, but much more, God transcendant, 
above all things. Plainly enough, God immanent 
is " very God/' yet is not God transcendant. 
This is what Trinitarians have always been care- 
ful to affirm, the Son is not the Father, but the 
Father is in the Son. And do you not remem- 
ber how Jesus quotes approvingly one of the Old 



THE END OF CONTROVERSY. 57 

Testament sayings which attribute divinity to 
man? — "I said, ye are gods" Microscopic, in- 
deal, but divine are we, sparks, as it were, of the 
flame of Deity. 

But do not Trinitarians say that Christ is the 
Creator of all things, and quote St. Paul for it, 
"one Lord Jesus Christ, by ivhom are all things?" 

Yes ; I suppose many imagine that to mean that 
the Son was the agent to whom the Father dele- 
gated the work of creation. But Athanasius 
vigorously protests against the idea that the Father 
simply begot the Son, and then the Son made all 
things. Not only the ancient Trinitarians, but the 
Scripture itself repudiates such an idea. Jesus says, 
"My Father tcorketh even until now" But have 
you noticed that the Revised Version has changed 
the text you quoted ? 

No ; how should it read ? 

Instead of " by whom/' it reads " through whom 
are all things" Accordingly we must modify the 
same phrase in the Nicene creed, and read " through 
whom " instead of " by whom," 

But does this materially alter the sense ? 

I think it does in this way. First, it is less open 
to a mechanical interpretation, in the sense of a 
delegated worker. Next, while it regards Christ 
as the cause of all things, it permits us to distinguish 



58 THE END OF CONTROVERSY. 

between God as the original Cause, by whom all 
things were made, and Christ as the final cause — 
the end for which are all things. 

You will need to explain this further ; it is a 
nice point, and new to me. 

It is a nice point, but for any clear and true 
thinking on this subject it is all important. It 
can, however, be made very clear. In accord with 
the Scripture, the Creed recognizes not the Son but 
the Father as Creator. " I believe in God, the 
Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, 
and of all things, visible and invisible." In 
what sense, then, can Christ be the cause " through 
whom are all things ? " Certainly not as the First 
Cause, but as the Final Cause. Christ, not as iso- 
lated, but as the Head of the perfected humanity, 
whose Divine Ideal He is, is the end for which all 
things have their being, their Final Cause. 

I see the reasonableness and the need of the dis- 
tinction which reserves the work of creation to the 
Father. But does not the phrase, " through whom," 
carry the idea that this Final Cause is somehow in- 
strumental to the making of things ? 

Certainly, and so that very text indicates, when 
it goes on to say, "and ice through Him" Christ 
is the instrumental cause of our being, as Paul says, 
" children of God through faith in Him" He is 



THE END OF CONTROVERSY. 59 

also the final cause of our being what we arc. 
That is, we exist for Him, for the realization of a 
Divine humanity in solidarity with Him. In the 
combination of these two thoughts you have the 
right point of view. The Divine End, or final 
cause, of all things, is the consummate and perfect 
life, of which Christ is the type. But this Divine 
Life is not an end outside the process of its devel- 
opment. It is immanent in the whole process as 
the quickening and organizing principle of the 
whole. It is at once the end, or consummation, 
and the instrumental cause of the whole movement. 
Have I made it clear ? 

I think I can see it as you do. It reminds me 
of the point you made, that before the advent of 
the historic Christ the essential Christ had begun 
to appear in a succession of more or less Christly 
men, prophets and sages, who were forerunners to 
prepare His way. 

Undoubtedly, what we see in Christ is the Di- 
vine Life that has ever been immanent in the 
world, ever unfolding itself toward its perfect 
glory, as both the instrumental and the final cause 
of all things. 

It is a grand thought, and to me, at least, it 
seems grandly true. But now will not Trinita- 
rians say that, after all, your idea of the strict 



60 TEE END OF CONTROVERSY. 

identity of nature in Christ and in us lowers the 
height at which the Apostles view Him as im- 
mensely above all other men, even the godliest ? 
Will they not say that thus w T e do aw 7 ay with the 
peerless uniqueness of "the only begotten Son of 
God?" 

Very likely, but not well. If they read their 
Bibles more carefully than some of them seem to 
do, they will observe that Luke speaks also of 
Adam as " son of God" What we do away 
with is not the uniqueness that is denoted by 
" only begotten," but only a false theory about it. 
You get the Scriptural point of view when you 
notice that the Epistle to the Hebrews calls Isaac 
the only begotten son of Abraham, as being the 
son of special promise, though Abraham had an 
older son, Ishmael. So this same epistle speaks of 
Christ as " the first begotten." Accordingly, w r e 
must refuse to recognize the term " only begotten " 
as belonging to Christ in virtue of any difference 
of nature from us. We discover the ground of it 
in an exceptional fulness of life, not only filled, 
but saturated — iron white with heat is the Athana- 
sian simile — with consciousness of the indwelling 
Father. Far beyond all human experience as 
this is, yet Paul does not deem it essentially and 
forever impossible to man ; for he looks forward 



THE END OE CONTROVERSY. 61 

" till we (ill attain unto the measure of the stature of 
the fulness of Christ." 

You have so fully disposed of every point where 
a possible objection might rise, that, if I suggest 
one more, it is only for the sake of completeness. 
Jesus, in His parable of the Wicked Husbandmen, 
draws a wide contrast between the prophets, as 
God's servants, and Himself, as God's Son. The 
same contrast recurs in the Epistle to the Hebrews. 
Moses is said to have been " faithful as a servant, 
but Christ as a son." Might it not be said, that 
this shows Christ to have been related to God in a 
way essentially different from the godliest of the 
men of old ? 

Indeed, it does show this, and I admit the fact 
of such a difference. But you see that the question 
is still left open : In what does this difference con- 
sist ? Does it consist in such a difference of na- 
ture as is alleged between the divine and the hu- 
man? We have observed the grave difficulties 
besetting such a view. Does it not, then, consist 
in a difference of spirit, as between the legal spirit 
of a servant, and the loving spirit of a son ? Un- 
deniably, there was such a difference between Jesus 
and Moses. This, indeed, may be said to be only 
a moral difference, but moral differences are as es- 
sential as an v. As related to God, the* contrasted 



62 THE END OF CONTROVERSY. 

terms " servant " and " son " are each ethical, and 
so the difference which they mark must be ethical. 
In accordance with this is what Jesus says of John 
the Baptist : " There hath not arisen a greater, yet 
he that is hut little in the kingdom of heaven is 
greater than heP 

I cordially grant that you have cleared your 
position of all objections, and that your views com- 
mend themselves to me as every way reasonable. 
But still I can hardly deem it possible that a con- 
troversy that has gone on for fifteen hundred years 
can be put to rest in one generation, or in two. 
You have easily convinced me, but the very diffi- 
culties I have had with current ideas made it easier 
for me to take the way out as soon as presented. 
But those who are content with these ideas, and do 
not see the rational difficulty they involve, will not 
readily part with them. They will even resent 
your pointing to the way out of the controversy, as 
a solicitation to the abandonment of the true faith. 

I fear they will. It has always been so, that 
those who were merely trying to remove the 
stumbling blocks from the way of faith have been 
accused of trying to destroy the road. But it is 
still a most Christian task, and one that we must 
never give up, however defamed for it, to try to 
think ourselves together on the questions which 



THE END OF CONTROVERSY. 63 

unhappily divide Christian people into hostile 
camps, especially in regard to this truth of truths, 
the Trinity, the richest of all truths in its practical 
connections with human life. 

AVhat you have just said reminds me that you 
are yet far from having given me your full 
thought about it. I remember your remark that 
the doctrine of the Trinity has even a larger inter- 
est for modern than for ancient thought. 

I am convinced that it has, and I desire much 
to talk it through with you. But we have covered 
so much ground to-day, that you must wish to go 
over it in your own mind before we go on to- 
gether. Very likely you will find questions to 
put on points that we have already touched. Then, 
of conrse, you are aware that there is one most im- 
portant part of the Trinitarian problem that w r e 
have not yet broached at all, the part which re- 
lates to the Holy Ghost. For all this I am sure 
we shall need to take more time another day. 

Be sure that I shall look forward to this with 
lively interest. It is not merely for my own intel- 
lectual satisfaction, but for the still larger interest 
that I shall find in helping others out of tL-3 
swamps from which you are extricating me. " 



III. 

THE WORD OR FORM OF GOD 

AND 

HOW TO THINK OF THE INCARNATION 



4$ marfoettou?! <® tuor^ipful! 

Ifto £ong or £ounb t£ frearb, 
%\xt clierptofrere, ant) ebcrg frnir, 
%n iotie, in ttji^rbom, anb in potter, 

Cfre ifatfrer £peafc£ fci£ Dear eternal toorb. 

Faber. 



III. 

THE WORD OR FORM OF GOD 

AND 

HOW TO THINK OF THE INCARNATION 

It seemed to me, said my friend, on our way 
from church one Sunday evening a few weeks 
later, that you had pretty thoroughly cleared of ob- 
jections the view you gave me. But you were say- 
ing when we parted, that in thinking it over I 
might find need to question you further, and 
doubtless you had in mind the very points I w T ish 
now to ask about. I have been carefully reading 
over the Epistles of Paul and the Gospel according 
to John, which seem so clearly to testify that 
Christ was conscious of a life that He had before He 
lived in this world. There, for instance, is His 
saying, " Before Abraham was, I am!' Some 
might object that this is in the Fourth Gospel, 
about which some critics doubt. But the same 
thought is in Paul's remark : " Ye know the grace 

67 



68 THE WORD OR 

of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He teas rich, 
yet for your sokes He became poor, that ye through 
His poverty might become rich." Do not such testi- 
monies to Christ's pre-existence indicate His nature 
as superhuman ? 

I think we shall have to look elsewhere to find 
proof that Christ was superhuman. You know 
that many people, some of them Christians, but 
more of them Buddhists, believe that all men have 
had existence in a previous life. I do not share the 
belief ; it is not incredible ; it is rather not proven. 
But I refer to it as indicating that there is nothing 
essentially superhuman in the fact, which I do not 
doubt, of Christ's pre-existence. There is another 
saying of Jesus in point here : " No man hath as- 
cended into heaven, but He that descended out of 
heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven" 
The humanity which we see in Christ is not lim- 
ited to this world, but exists before it, as well as 
after. 

But does not the Scripture expressly affirm that 
Christ is superior to the angels ? 

No doubt it does. But it leaves the question 
open, in what that superiority consists, whether in 
a higher kind of nature, or in function, influence, 
and achievement. The point may be illustrated 
by the superior reverence which, in degree as the 



FORM OF GOD. 69 

ideals of Christianity obtain preference to all 
others, we accord to philanthropy as compared with 
intellectual power. The most potent names, the 
highest thrones, are those of benefactors. It is 
these of whom the heavenly doxology in the Apoc- 
alypse says, " they reign upon the earth." I think 
that this is the most reasonable point of view in so 
obscure a subject as the relation of Christ to the 
angels. The Redeemer of the human race may 
well be thought of as the Apostles describe him, a 
prince of princes in the world of spirits. 

I have met with the suggestion that the angels 
may be simply the perfected spirits of just men. 
Do you think that probable? 

It is possible. The whole subject is a field for 
conjecture. At least, we may say that the angels 
are identical in spiritual nature with men. Jesus 
says of the dead who have entered into the life of 
the world to come, that they are " equal icith the 
angels" But we must not wander from our 
point. What I think quite certain is, that the 
homoousios, which the Creed affirms of Christ and 
the Father, is a universal fact in the world of 
spirit. The essential core of human nature is 
spirit. Jesus says, " God is Spirit" The Scrip- 
tures term angels " spirits." However manifold in 
rank, spiritual nature is of one kind. 



70 THE WORD OR 

Is there then no line between God and man ? 

Let me answer by asking. Is there a line be- 
tween the Infinite and the finite ? We recognize 
what is Infinite, and what is finite. We see that 
the one is not the other. But we can draw no 
line and say, Here the finite ends, and here the In- 
finite begins. According to the Scriptures, the one 
is so in the other that no line can be drawn be- 
tween them. Paul teaches, both that God is in us, 
and we in God. "In Him toe live, and move, and 
have our being" He " is over all, and through all, 
and in all" 

But is not John's saying, that the Word, who 
was in the beginning with God, and who was God, 
became flesh in the Christ, usually taken to mean 
that, in w T hat we call the Incarnation, God first 
manifested himself in humanity ? 

That is, no doubt, the common mistake. But it 
is corrected by the fact w r e dwelt on in our last con- 
versation, that before the advent of the historical 
Christ, the essential Christ had begun to come into 
the world in a succession of more or less Christly 
men. In every such man of God, according to 
the measure of the grace given him, there had thus 
been what we might call a pre-historic incarnation 
of the Divine Word. Of these it is true that John 
says nothing, but we must not mistake silence for 



FORM OF GOD. 71 

negation. Now but for these the historic Incarna- 
tion could not have come to birth in " the fulness 
of the time/' 

I am disposed to think that the common notion 
of the Incarnation is much narrower than it should 
be. But now I wish you would tell me how you 
understand that mysterious name, " the Word" 
As John uses it, it seems so unlike anything else in 
the Bible. Has it not been supposed to be a piece 
of Grecian philosophy, and no genuine thought of 
the Apostle ? 

Quite unjustifiably so. There is a close parallel 
to it in the soliloquy of Wisdom in the eighth 
chapter of Proverbs. The coeternity of Wisdom 
with Jehovah is there described in terms similar to 
John's description of the coeternity of the Word 
with God. All there is of Grecian philosophy in 
John is simply the form, suited to his times, into 
which he cast this Old Testament idea of the Eter- 
nal Wisdom through which God made all that is. 
The term Logos, or Word, is said to have been 
borrowed from Philo, a Jewish-Greek philosopher 
of Alexandria. And it was certainly an improved 
substitute for the Hebrew term, " Wisdom." 

You must explain that, for Hebrew or Greek is 
all beyond me. 

It can be made very plain directly. Professor 



72 THE WORD OB 

Max Muller has given us the key to it in his ob- 
servation, that a word is simply a spoken thought, 
made audible as sound. Take away from a word 
the sound of it, and what is left of it is simply 
the thought in it. This simple distinction is pre- 
served in the Greek noun, logos, in the double 
meaning which it carries of thought and speech, 
while its English synonym, u word/' means only 
speech. An English reader loses this in the trans- 
lation, and it is no small loss. To us a word is 
something transitory and unsubstantial, which dies 
upon the air as soon as spoken. But to a Greek 
there was the abiding thought behind the passing 
form. 

Ah, you have quickly solved the puzzle, and I 
confess it was a puzzle to me, that what seems so 
fugitive and unsubstantial as a word should be the 
name given to that which " ivas in the beginning 
with God" and "was God" 

Well, you see now what John's phrase conveyed 
to a Greek. His Logos, or Word, meant first, 
Eternal Thought, and next, a coeternal Utterance 
of it in outward expression. Here we find that 
truth of the " Eternal Sonship " which Dr. 
Martineau has recognized, the Eternal Manifesta- 
tion of God. So Athanasius used to say, " The 
Word is always Son." John's further meaning is, 



FORM OF GOD. 73 

that this Divine Word, or Son, wherein God 
eternally manifests Himself, is as really Divine 
as God Himself: God immanent in the finite 
manifestation is one with God transcendent in His 
Infinitude. 

What, do you say that the Word was God, and 
yet finite ? 

Finite only as to form ; infinite as to what the 
form suggests or expresses. How else could we 
think ? By " Word " some kind of form is 
meant, and any form must be finite. But the 
Word is the form taken by the Infinite Intelli- 
gence, which transcends all forms. And this, 
whether under a form or above it, is God. I 
think you must see that in the very nature of 
things the Infinite Deity cannot be apprehended by 
finite minds except under some finite form, or 
" Word ; " while that which we apprehend under 
such a form must be the Deity Himself. 

But are you not departing here from the Atha- 
nasian orthodoxy ? You were saying in our previous 
conversation that the Arians held that Christ was 
of a created nature, and not eternal, while the 
Athanasians held the contrary. I agree with you 
that in the nature of things the Word, the " form 
of God " in which, according to Paul, Christ pre- 
existed, must be finite. I do not so clearly see 



74 THE WORD OR 

how this differs from the Arian idea of a nature 
that is created, not eternal. 

But you will admit this, that while an infinite 
form is a contradiction in terms and unthinkable, 
it is not so with an eternal form. That is recog- 
nized in Plato's doctrine of " ideas/' as the eternal 
patterns of the things that are created in time. 
And what did Tennyson say when anticipating the 
future reunion with his dead friend ? 

" Eternal form shall still divide 
The eternal soul from all beside." 

For my part I cannot think of the eternal Intelli- 
gence as without some coeternal Form of utterance 
or expression. Most true is Faber's thought : 

" Everywhere, and every hour, 
In love, in wisdom, and in power, 
The Father speaks his dear, eternal Word." 

Neither can I think of this eternal Form, or 
"Word," as created, in the Arian sense of the 
term. By creation Arius meant an act of God 
that was voluntary but not necessary to Him, 
something that He could dispense with. But the 
Athanasian thought is, that self-expression is a ne- 
cessity of nature to the Infinite Mind. A dumb 
God was to them unthinkable. And so they put 
into the Nicene Creed that clause which says of the 



FORM OF GOD. 75 

Son, "Begotten, not made." By creation the 
Arians understood things which did not always 

exist, and their usual formula said of the Son, 
"There was a time when He was not." The Atha- 
nasiaus, on the contrary, affirmed as in the Nioene 
formula Plis eternal existence : " Begotten of His 
Father before all worlds." 

Well, I cannot see but that you are orthodox 
according to the ancients, even if not according to 
some moderns. But now let me ask if Paul, in 
that famous second chapter of his letter to Philippi, 
does not imply that the pre-existing Christ was the 
sole AYord, or Form, of God. 

Not the sole, however the supreme Form. It is 
singular that the Revisers have not made the same 
correction there which they made in that other 
text, in the letter to Timothy, where they have rec- 
tified the sense by reading, " The love of money is a 
root of all evils; w not, the root. So here, Paul does 
not say the Form of God, as if there were but one, 
but " a form." His exact words are : " Who, orig- 
inally existing in a divine form — literally, a form 
of God — thought it not a thing to grasp at to be on 
an equality with God" There is no such thing, 
either in Scripture or in reason, as the one sole 
Form of God, which is suggested by our mistrans- 
lation. 



76 THE WORD OB 

It also seems to me that Paul does not regard 
the pre-existing Christ as possessing full equality 
with God, for a thing in possession is not " a 
thing to grasp at." But please now restate for 
me concisely the points of this somewhat intricate 
discussion. 

Varying slightly from the order in which they 
came up, they are these : What John means by 
" the Word " is God's eternal self-expression in 
some outward form. Such " a Form of God," as 
Paul calls it, was the pre-existent humanity of 
Christ. Such " a form of God " is our humanity, 
which, however corrupted, is identical in nature 
with Christ's. Here I am reminded of Dr. Dale's 
recent remark, that Christ's Incarnation was not 
" an isolated and abnormal wonder. It was God's 
witness t& the true and ideal relation of all men to 
God." * 

That is a remarkable saying. Do you think he 
means to dissent from the current view as to the 
miraculous birth of Jesus ? 

Not at all, though it might be so understood, if 
one were to take for granted what is by no means 
true, that there can be no Divine incarnation with- 
out a miracle. As to the miracle, that is a sepa- 
rate and wholly independent question. We shall 

* Christian Fellowship, p. 159, 



FORM OF GOD. 77 

come to this point later on. I take Dr. Dale to 
mean only this : God was not word-less, dumb, or 
unexpressed in form, until the historic hour when 
in Christ " the Word became flesh." This event 
Ave call by preeminence " the Incarnation," since in 
Christ the Divine Word finds fullest utterance. 
But it is no detached event, it is the issue of an 
eternal process of utterance, the Word " whose go- 
ings forth" as Micah said, "have been from of old, 
from everlasting ." Since all that is finite proceeds 
from the Infinite and Self-existent One, all the 
forms of finite existence are embodiments of Him, 
expressions of His Eternal Intelligence, and, there- 
fore, though in varying fulness of expression, His 
Word. 

What you have said reminds me of what I was 
reading the other day : 

u Let each man think himself an act of God, 
His mind a thought, his life a breath of God." 

I realize the profound truth of this much more 
clearly for what you have said. 

Certainly, it is only when w r e enlarge our 
thought of the Incarnation, and view it no longer 
as an isolated and abnormal wonder, but rather as 
the luminous and convincing act, which reveals the 
eternal process of the Word as taking effect not in 



78 THE WORD OB 

Christ only, but in us also, that the kinship of all 
human lives in God begins to be realized in a di- 
vine sympathy of each with each ; our separate 
lives cease to seem so exclusive of each other, and 
our human brotherhood is profoundly felt in a 
sense of our real unity in the Divine Fatherhood. 
So the scattered pools in the rocks by the shore are 
united by the inflow of the sea tide. 

Yes, and now I begin to understand what your 
Episcopalian friends who are interested in the 
laboring men mean by their idea of studying so- 
cial problems " in the light of the Incarnation." 
But here, at any rate, if not before, it seems to me 
we part company with the old Athanasian ortho- 
doxy. What you said in our first conversation 
made it plain that they differed from Dr. Dale's 
idea of the Incarnation. Did they not regard it as 
an isolated and abnormal wonder ? 

They certainly did. They recognized the Di- 
vine Word, or Son, in Christ only. To them He 
only was the proper issue of the Father's nature, 
and begotten of Him. All we were of alien na- 
ture, fashioned from earth. But they did well in 
securing that Christian thought should ever recog- 
nize, at least in one elect member of our race, the 
nature of very God. Thus they laid the founda- 
tion on which advancing thought now reaches up 



FOBJI OF GUI). 79 

to that larger and truer conception of our human- 
ity, on which we base our hope of realizing a di- 
vine morality in individual life, and a divine order 
in the social organism. 

What you have just said recalls a remark you 
have already made, that the Trinitarian doctrine 
has a larger interest for modern than for ancient 
thought. 

Yes ; but before we take that up let me ask you 
a question, for we must make it still clearer, if we 
can, how we should think on this whole subject of 
the Logos and the Incarnation. Have you not 
had this idea of the Incarnation, that it was the 
entrance of the Divine Substance, or Essence, into 
combination with a human substance, or essence? 

I have, but we have disposed of that idea, the 
fallacy of the " two natures." Indeed, it seems to 
me a rather gross and mechanical conception, like 
that of an alloy of different metals. I agree with 
you that we ought to give up such phrases as " the 
union of God and man," because they inevitably 
suggest some such mechanical idea. I greatly pre- 
fer the way of speaking which you have suggested, 
the manifestation of God in man. 

Very well ; now r as to this manifestation of 
God, which the Athanasians thought of under the 
names of Logos (or Word) and Son, how do you 



HO HOW TO THINK OF 

think of it — as the manifestation of the Divine 
Substance or Essence, or of Divine Powers— prop- 
erties and qualities ? 

I do not know. I have never asked myself 
that question/ and have never analyzed my 
thought on that subject. Does it make any differ- 
ence what one thinks about that ? 

It seems to me that it does. In the first place 
we do not know anything about substance or es- 
sence, whether material or spiritual, human or di- 
vine. All that we know is the properties or qual- 
ities of substances. Who can know what iron is 
in its essence, apart from its properties or qualities ? 
No more can we know what man is in essence, 
or what God is. We must strictly keep to what 
w r e know. Then next, to avoid pantheism, we 
must distinguish between God and all that derives 
existence from Him. John does so in his thought 
of the Logos, the Form in which Infinite Intelli- 
gence eternally finds utterance. Not only does he 
say, " the Word was God" thus identifying the 
two, but also, " the Word was with God" thus dis- 
tinguishing the two. Now I think it of great im- 
portance to guard this distinction, and so I would 
draw a firm line between the Divine Substance, of 
which we can know nothing, so wholly transcend- 
ent is it to all thought, and the Divine powers, 



THE IS CARNATION. 81 

properties and qualities immanent in the visible 
forms of existence, and clearly recognizable as 
proper objects of thought. In so doing we shall 
not only steer clear of pantheism, but we shall do 
justice to all of truth that agnosticism can protest 
for. 

I partly understand you, but I should better 
appreciate your distinction if you would show me 
how you apply it in your thinking. 

Well, take first the subject that is central in all 
Trinitarian thought, the deity of Christ, What \$ 
the popular conception ? The ordinary Unitarian 
insists that Christ was " a mere man/' As ii 
there could be such a thing as " mere " man, ex- 
clusive of aught above and beyond him, self- 
centred and self-moved ! The ordinary Trinita- 
rian, on the other hand, insists on his formula, 
that Christ is God and man, w T hich we have al- 
ready discussed. Do you not see that each of them 
is thinking of substances or essences, the divine 
and the human, as separate or as combined ? 
They are at a dead-lock simply because they are 
disputing about that of which it is impossible to 
know anything. 

I see this clearly enough, and it would seem 
that the only way out is on the other line of 
thought, dealing solely with the Divine powers 



82 HOW TO THINK OF 

and qualities, so confessedly found in Christ. But 
it seems strange that this way should not be taken. 

I suppose that Trinitarians are afraid, first,- of 
conceding anything to Unitarians, as persons to be 
opposed always, and next, of seeming to be content 
with something less divine in Christ than " very 
God," if they should be satisfied to find in Him 
Divine powers and qualities only. 

A groundless fear you deem it, I suppose. 

I do, and, as I think, with good reason. For, 
first, every Divine power and quality pertains to 
the Divine essence ; next, the Scripture itself leads 
us on this line. "We beheld His glory" says 
John, " glory as of the only begotten, full of grace 
and truth." Here the fulness of God in Christ is 
expressly recognized as a fulness of moral qualities 
— " grace and truth." Then, on the other hand, 
the fact that grace and truth are of the essence of 
the moral nature, whether in God or man, points 
to the conclusion we reached some time ago, the 
identity of this nature, whether viewed in its Di- 
vine side toward Infinitude, or on its human side 
in finiteness. 

You have made your point, that we should 
study Powers, not Substances, quite clear in its ap- 
plication to our thinking about Christ. Please 
.show me now how you apply it further. 



THE INCARNATION. 83 

I hold that we must take the same line of think- 
ing in regard to the world itself, animate and inan- 
imate, as an embodiment — a sort of incarnation — of 
God. The Scriptures look on the universe as a 
real logos, or word, of God. " The heavens declare 
the glory of God" " Day unto day uttereth speech" 
St. Paul tells us that " the invisible things of God 
.since the creation are perceived through the things 
that are made" Indeed, to a large part of man- 
kind the main part of Revelation has come in this 
line. Even we shall find that Nature has much to 
tell us of God which even Christ has not told us, 
supremely important as is what Christ has told us. 

I suppose it would be well if theologians were 
better students of nature as interpreted by science. 

This is what Dr. Dale says about it : " This 
new scientific conception of the order of nature will 
compel Christendom to revise some of its theologi- 
cal conceptions concerning the life of God."* And 
Principal Fairbairn says : " As is your God, such 
will your system be, and you can no more read 
theology through Christ alone than you can read 
Nature through one individual fact.' ? f Now, on the 
line of the Biblical idea that the universe is a 

** Christian Fellowship, p. 185. 

f Address at the Congregational Council in London. 



84 HOW TO THINK OF 

word, or logos, of God, what do we look to find 
therein ? 

Not the Divine Substance, I suppose, but the 
Divine Thought, God's wisdom, power, etc. 

Just so. But on the contrary, the pantheist 
tries to identify the world with God in substance, 
precisely as many Trinitarians identify Christ. 
And we have to make the same protest in each 
case ; each goes beyond the limits of possible 
knowledge. The only practicable way of thought 
for each is in the line of Powers. It is as plain in 
the universe as in the person of Christ, that here 
are embodied Divine Powers. These, as in Christ, 
are of the Divine Essence, however unknowable 
that is in itself. 

True. I remember long ago meeting the as- 
tronomer HerschePs suggestion, that the force of 
gravitation seemed like that of a universal will. 

Even so. All the forces of the universe, 
whether molecular or cosmical, must be full of In- 
finite Intelligence, for the plain reason that we see 
everywhere a mathematical order and proportion 
and precision ; but mathematics can be nothing 
else than the expression of Mind. However, 
these conceptions of Power, Will, Intelligence, 
may be rather too abstract for the purpose of 
our discussion. I prefer the more concrete thing 



THE INCARNATION. 85 

which comprehends and unites them all in a 
vivid form. 

What is that ? 

It is that familiar yet mysterious complex of 
Power or Force, Will, and Intelligence or Mind, 
which we know by its properties as Life, while 
totally ignorant as to what it is in its essence. It 
is on the line of thought which an adequate con- 
ception of Life opens to us that we shall come to 
that larger interest which the Trinitarian idea of 
God possesses for modern as compared with an- 
cient thought. It is on this line that we shall yet 
find science and Scripture consenting in the Trin- 
ity as the truth of truths, the comprehensive ex- 
pression of God's relation to the world and to all 
that in it is. 

This is so new a thought to me that I am deeply 
interested to have it unfolded. 

Let us then begin with what we see and know. 
Here is the phenomenon of Life, myriad-faced in 
its variety of form, yet strangely one in its in- 
stincts, in its self-propagating energy, in its power 
to transform inorganic elements into organisms. 
Earth, air, and sea all teem with it, in things vis- 
ible and invisible. Omnipresent, inextinguishable, 
wonder-working in its evolutionary process from 
the amoeba up to man, wonderful in its conscious- 



86 HOW TO THINK OF 

ness, its energy, its intelligent use of means to ends, 
its endless variety, and yet, from first to last, one 
in its many branching, ever widening stream — 
what and whence this familiar miracle, this thing 
at once so natural and so supernatural, that we 
name Life ? Certainly, it is fhe Sovereign Power 
among the other powers of the world, intelligently 
making all things the vassals of its will, the instru- 
ments of its intelligence. 

Yes, and it is not the product of anything else, 
but rather the producer of things. 

Exactly so; the scientists agree that life can 
come only from life. It is fairly describable in 
the phrase of the Nicene Creed, " begotten, not 
made — through whom all things were made." 
Nor do I think that any one doubts that life ex- 
isted before the world was, a stream coeternal with 
its fount in Deity. Here then, " in the begin- 
ning," as the Scripture says, at the starting point 
of thought, we find the Father and the Son coex- 
isting, as the All generating Life and the Life 
which is generated, and therefore filial. 

This seems to me a rather wide enlargement of 
the early Trinitarian notions. 

It is, and yet not in a different line from the 
suggestion of Athanasius, who tells the Arians that 
u the Son is the Living Will of the Father." Nor 



THE INCARNATION. 87 

can I think of a fitter phrase than this to describe 
the stream of life that eternally issues from the 
fontal Deity. For Will is power, both mental 
and moral. So Tennyson says : 

" O Living Will, that shalt endure 

When all that seems shall suffer shock, 
Rise from the Spiritual Rock, 

Flow through our deeds, and make them pure." 

Do you think it might be objected, when you 
thus identify the term " Son " with the universal 
Life that is begotten of God, that you take from 
Christ what is a glory peculiarly His own ? 

It would not be an intelligent objection. 
Christ's glory is not shown by any absence of the 
Divine Life elsewhere, but by its unequalled ful- 
ness in Him, in whom, as Paul says, " all things 
come to a heady Nay, I think the view we take 
is peculiarly Scriptural. 

Please mention some of the passages you have 
in mind. 

Wel^ there is the Old Testament phrase so often 
repeated, " the living God" so much better than 
the modern phrase, " personal God," which is al- 
most always misunderstood to mean that God is an 
individual, existing in separateness from other in- 
dividuals. This inspired thought conceived of 
God as self-existent Life — a word that includes the 



88 HOW TO THINK OF 

necessary elements of personality — self-conscious- 
ness, spontaneity, and intelligent power, without 
any of the limitations that our fragmentary human 
personality suggests. Then the Epistle to the 
Hebrews says, " The Word of God is living" 
(A. V. " auick,") which recalls Jesus' saying, 
" The Father hath life in Himself and hath given to 
the Son to have life in Himself" Then John, speak- 
ing of Christ, says, " We show unto you the Life, the 
Eternal. Life, which was with the Father, and was 
manifested unto us" This, again, recalls Jesus' 
great sayings, " I am the Way, the Truth, and the 
Life;" u L am the Resurrection and the Life;" 
" The Living Father hath sent Me, and L live by the 
Father" And so it seems to me, as we follow out 
our line of thought about Divine Powers on the 
line of Life, as the Sovereign and Comprehensive 
Power, that we find it to be a truth in which sci- 
ence and Scripture agree, that every incarnation of 
life is, pro tanto, and in its measure, an incarna- 
tion of God ; and that the age-long way of God, 
so far as we can trace it in the world, is in a perpet- 
ually increasing incarnation of Life, whose climax 
and crown is the Divine fulness of Life in Christ. 

I quite enjoy your exposition. But please add 
one more to the fresh thoughts which you have 
been giving me out of these old texts : What does 



THE INCARNATION. 89 

the Apostle mean by saying, " In Him [Christ] all 
things consist?" 

I take it, in the literal sense of the word " con- 
sist/' — Le. y stand together — to mean that all things 
have their unity, reach the one common end of 
their existence, in Him. This the context shows : 
" were created through — that is, because of — Him 
and unto Him" The Divine end for which all 
things exist is the manifestation of the Divine hu- 
manity in Christ, with a view to its ultimate real- 
ization in all. So Jesus said : " I in them and 
Thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in one" 
For this all earlier life came forth. I may illus- 
trate it thus : The dome, the crowning glory of 
such a pile as St. Peter's church, is the end for 
which all the lower parts of the building exist. 
They all reach their end and find their unity in 
this. Thus Paul would say, all the innumerable 
ranks of Life, of whom Christ is the resplendent 
Head, " were created in Him," and " consist," or 
stand together, in Him, whom they were to lead 
up to and exhibit as their consummation, and the 
end for which they exist. 

I admit the perfect reasonableness of these 
views. Yet I have seen it objected that while 
God is certainly the Creator of all life, we cannot 
regard all life as essentially one, and a thing di- 



90 HOW TO THINK OF 

vine, because it is often hideous and destructive in 
its varieties, as in snakes and tigers. What would 
you say to this ? 

I should say it was foolishly sentimental, like 
the repugnance of some sensitive people to cater- 
pillars. I should put in contrast with it the better 
views we find in the Bible. According to Job, it 
is a divine intelligence that prompts and guides 
the migrations of the birds : " Doth the hawk fly 
by Thy wisdom, and stretch her wings toward the 
South ? " If so, it is Divine Intelligence by which 
the hawk also seeks its legitimate prey. Thus the 
psalmist thinks : " The young lions roar after their 
prey, and seek their meat from God" In all the 
constitutional instincts of living creatures we see 
the energizing of the all-pervading, Infinite Mind, 
which constitutes them w T hat they are. Much as 
we dread the predaceous creatures, they are, as Dr. 
Martineau observes, the necessary burial-corps and 
scavengers of the animal creation. But for them, 
the air and waters would be poisoned by the decay 
of animal bodies. Offensive as these scavengers 
may be to the fastidious tastes of perhaps over re- 
fined people, we must recognize even in their de- 
structive instincts the activity of the Divine Intelli- 
gence that animates all life. What Paul says, 
" All flesh is not the same flesh" indicates merely 



THE INCARNATION. 91 

that the forms are many, though the life at its root 
is one. 

You carry my thought irresistibly along with 
yours. The larger interest which the truth of the 
Trinity has for modern thought I begin to realize 
better than I could clearly express, for I am only 
a learner. Would you now restate for me, as con- 
cisely as may be, the salient points of the position 
we have reached ? 

Willingly ; only bear in mind that the Trinita- 
rian position will not be fully outlined, so long 
as we have in reserve so important a part of it 
as the Holy Ghost. What we have gone over 
I would sum up in this triple statement : (1) 
The Living Father, Maker of heaven and earth, 
does not live apart from His creation, but lives in it 
from the beginning, as its Begotten or Filial Life. 
And this universal Life, whether existing or pre- 
existing, whether before the world or in the world, 
through all its myriad ranks from the highest to 
the lowest, whether in angels or in amoebas, in 
men or in the Christ, is His coeternal Word, or 
Son — His utterance, His offspring. (2) The Liv- 
ing God in His unknown and infinite transcendency 
above the world is God the Father, but in His re- 
vealed immanency in the life of the world is God 
the Son. In this conception of God, the ancient 



92 HOW TO THINK OF 

chasm between God and man, which error has 
fancied, and sin has exaggerated, is filled at all 
points, not at one point only (as in the ancient fal- 
lacy of the " two natures " that were said to be 
conjoined in Christ). The immanent is one with 
the transcendent Power ; the Filial Stream is one 
with its Paternal Fount. (3) To Christ supremely 
belongs the name of Son, which includes all the 
life that is begotten of God. He is the beloved 
and unique representative of this universal sonship, 
" the first-born " said Paul, " of all creation" In 
Christ the before unconscious sonship of the world 
awakes to consciousness of the Father. Worthiest 
to bear the name of the Son of God, in a pre-emi- 
nent but not exclusive right, is He. Nor only has 
He revealed to orphaned men their partnership with 
Him in the Life and Love of the All Father. His 
peerless distinction as the Son is, that in Him shine 
at their brightest these moral glories which belong 
to the very crown of Deity. 

I thank you very much for this statement. It 
seems to me that there is this great moral advan- 
tage in your view. It makes human life seem a 
more sacred thing, to be the more scrupulously 
guarded from degradation, as a thing divine. 

True, and here also is the impregnable ground 
on which rests all philanthropic imitation of 



THE INCARNATION. 93 

Christ. There is in the lowest man a spark of the 
Divine Life. I think it is Jean Ingelow who 
says : 

" The street and market place 
Grow holy ground : each face — 
Pale faces marked with care, 
Dark, toil-worn brows — grows fair. 
King's children are these all, though want and sin 
Have marred their beauty, glorious within. 
We may not pass them but with reverent eye." 

There is in the most degraded lives an image of 
God to be brought out, as Michael Angelo said of 
the angel in the rough block. Said Paul, " the 
head of every man is Christ" 

Yes, and furthermore, is there not a new spring 
of sympathy opened by seeing that every inearna- 
nation of Life is, in its measure, an incarnation of 
God? 

Indeed there is. Men who have believed that 
God and man have been united in Christ alone 
have cruelly persecuted each other. There is no 
universal bond of human sympathy but in the dis- 
covery of the one Life in all lives, and something 
of God in each. This is the fact that John points 
to, when he says : " He that loveth not his brother, 
whom he hath seen, cannot love God, whom he hcrfh 
not seen" Here opens the spring of compassion 



94 HOW TO THINK OF 

toward all that lives, not only in human kind, but 
in the lower creatures also. 

I would like to ask you if you have also found 
in your larger conception of the Trinitarian idea of 
sonship any personal comfort amidst the troubles 
and sorrows of life. 

I have. When I see that God is not only the 
Giver but the Sharer of my life, that my natural 
powers are that part of God's power which is 
lodged with me in trust to keep and use, I feel on 
one hand the spur to self-reliance on what there is 
of God's power in me, as the right way of depend- 
ence on what there is of God's power above me. 
On the other hand, when I am burdened under my 
weakness and sin, I am prompted to faith that 
God will not forsake His own, will not abandon 
what there is of God in me, but, as Paul said, 
" will perfect what is lacking." Here it seems to 
me we may find that rock of strength and peace 
on which Jesus in His sorest need took refuge : 
" The Father hath not left Me alone ; " « The Father 
is in Me, and I in Him" 

You have done me a great service. Your 
thoughts lift me to a higher and holier view of life 
than I ever took before. It is true that one has 
to come at it by some close thinking, but it is clear 
thinking, with no confusing shadows of mystery. 



THE INCARNATION. 95 

And it would be as foolish to grudge the effort of 
getting up to these higher ranges of thought, as to 
grudge the hill-climbing that rewards one with a 
fair prospect from the top. But I can hardly help 
smiling at the ridiculous notion I used to have, 
that the Trinity was a cloudy phantom of specula- 
tive philosophers, out of all connection with the 
real world and practical reason. You have made 
me see — at least so far as we have gone with it — 
that it touches life and thought at every point, and 
is full of practical value. 

You will find even more of this in it before we 
get through. We have been attending mainly, as 
the Nicene Creed does, to the questions concerning 
the Son of God. It is here that the difficulties 
and the interest of the subject have always cen- 
tred. For what remains we must take another 
hour. But I would like to leave this remark with 
you to think upon, for we shall discuss it before 
we get through. In the line of thought about the 
Trinity that we have followed lies all hope of rid- 
dance from the false supernaturalism that has al- 
ways fomented schism within the church and skep- 
ticism outside. In the construction of a complete 
Trinitarianism on the lines of our present thought 
lies the solution of the question on which the men 
of faith and the men of science are yet unhappily 



96 HOW TO THINK OF 

divided : Is the supernatural a reality ? And 
what then is the revelation of the supernatural to 
the natural ? 

This is a turn of the subject as unexpected as it 
is interesting. 

And yet you see its immediate connection with 
our theme. In the world of form, called Nature, 
Life is the Supernatural Reality, for it is above 
Nature, the Producer of Nature, not a product. 
Life is the organizing Power, Nature the organ- 
ized form. This mystery of Life is one with the 
mystery of the Living God. His Trinity is the 
Trinity in His Life. The Father is the Life 
Transcendent, the Divine Source, " above all" 
The Son is the Life Immanent, the Divine Stream, 
" through all" The Holy Ghost — here I must 
anticipate what we have yet to talk about — is the 
Life Individualized, the Divine Spherule, " in all" 
the Divine Inflow into the individual conscious- 
ness, giving inspiration to the conscience of each- 
separate child of the Father of all. 

Your words recall to me a hymn of Faber's. 
How you have lighted up the meaning ! 

" We share in what is Infinite, 'tis ours, 
For we and It alike are Thine." 

I feel indebted to you more than I can express. 



THE INCARNATION. 97 

You have given a new inspiration to my thoughts 
of God, and man, and life, and Christ. AVhat 
hard thinking you must have done to untie all the 
knots of so tangled a subject ! 

Ah, my dear friend, the hardness is not in the 
effort of thinking ; it is in the effort to live as we 
think. 



IV. 

THE NEGLECTED TERM IN THE 
TRINITY 



l €\)t (Consummating Hobe of <£ott 
€bt %\mit of tfce Cbree," 

FabeEo 



IV. 

THE NEGLECTED TERM IN THE TRINITY 

Well, said I, as we started out for a walk some 
days afterward, does our subject grow upon you? 

Every way it does. In the line of thought you 
have given me it seems to me that I apprehend 
God more clearly than ever before, as immediately 
related to the world, and in continual touch with 
me. No one with your conception of the Trinity 
can live in a soulless world or an unspiritual life. 
Ah, how different it seems to me from that chilly 
fog-bank of mystery that I always avoided with 
something, as I fancy, of Daniel AVebster's feeling, 
when he remarked about it, that we must not ex- 
pect to understand the arithmetic of heaven. 
Why is it that such an intellect as his should be 
put to such confusion as that remark betrays ? 

I suppose it is because of the common idea of 
God, which he shared with the popular thought — 

a God who is separate from man in nature and in 

101 



102 THE NEGLECTED TERM 

place, who controls things from outside, as a king 
controls his realm. The only notion of a Trinity 
that will fit this non-Christian idea of God is that 
of a trio, or triplet, of Persons. Then, to save our 
primal faith in the Divine Unity, it has to be ex- 
plained that these Persons are not Persons in any 
earthly sense. But the explanation deepens the 
mystery. And so some accept the unintelligible 
and appeal to faith, and some reject it and appeal 
to reason. It is all because of the false notion 
they have of God, as an outside God. The Scrip- 
tural conception of God, as immanent in the world 
and in the spirit of man, is indispensable to any 
rational conception of Trinity in the Self-Existent 
One. 

I suppose, then, you lay it down, as a first prin- 
ciple for right thinking on the subject, that no man 
can have any fit idea of the Trinity except on the 
basis of a true idea of God. 

Precisely so ; it is the key of the temple. And 
for a true idea of God we must go to the Scrip- 
tures, to the Old Testament teaching of "The Liv- 
ing God/ 7 to Jesus' teaching of "The Living 
Father" and of Himself as " the Life" and to 
John's teaching of "the Eternal Life, which was 
with the Father, and was manifested to us" Here 
we discard theological word-play about the un- 



IN THE TRINITY. 103 

knowable substances, divine or human, which long 
ago brought the disputants into a hopeless dead- 
lock. We turn to the manifest reality of the 
Powers that issue forth from Deity, especially the 
complex and Sovereign Power known as Life. 
The Trinity of the Living God must be a Trinity 
in His life. And this, according to the Scriptural 
idea of God — as " through" and " in" as well as 
" above " us — must include these three terms : the 
Transcendent Divine Life that is above the world, 
the Immanent Divine Life that is universal 
through the world and perfected in the Christ, and 
the Individualized Divine Life that is begotten in 
each separate consciousness and conscience. 

I see you have answered a question that I have 
not asked you, though I have sometimes put it to 
myself, why there should be three terms only, a 
Trinity and not a Quaternity, or more. 

I am glad that you have mentioned this. 
There can be no more, no less, than these three 
terms, for the simple reason that these include the 
entire sphere of power, and will, and mind. The 
whole orb of existence is thus filled in every part, 
both in mass and in molecule, with the infinite ac- 
tivities of God. 

Well, now I want to say that my mind has fas- 
tened on the thought you gave me when we 



104 THE NEGLECTED TERM 

parted, that in the Trinity rightly construed we 
find the true solution of the difficult question 
about the relation of the natural and supernatural, 
and a riddance of the false supernatural] sm that 
infests the church, and provokes skepticism. Shall 
we take this up now ? 

I wish by all means to talk that through with 
you. It is one of the most interesting parts of our 
subject. But we have not yet gone over the 
ground on the Trinity. Let us do this first, and 
then go into that application of it. The Holy 
Ghost, or, as the American Revisers wish us to 
say, the Holy Spirit, seems to me to be the term 
in the Trinity that is specially neglected. We 
shall do well to take this up at once. 

Most willingly. Let me at once bring up the 
point which always perplexed me. " The Holy 
Spirit " never seemed to me more than a special 
name for God. The Father and the Son seem dis- 
tinct enough. Then it is also plain that the 
Father in His Fatherhood is more than the Son in 
His Sonship. The Son must always say, as Jesus 
said, ' c My Father is greater than I" But the 
term " Spirit " seems coextensive with the term 
" God," as Jesus said, " God is Spirit." So I 
never was able to see any more than a nominal 
distinction, quite insufficient to constitute any 



IN THE TRINITY. 105 

Third Person, or Personality, as in the church 
doctrine. 

But you were not more at fault than most Trin- 
itarians are. They generally admit that this is 
very indistinctly apprehended. It is just as 
Jesus said : The world cannot receive the Spirit, 
"for it beholdeth Him not." At any rate, this part 
of the Trinitarian doctrine has been left undevel- 
oped. The Nicene Creed contents itself with these 
brief and general terms : " I believe in the Holy 
Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life, Who proceed- 
eth from the Father and the Son, Who with the 
Father and the Son together is worshipped and 
glorified, Who spake by the prophets." But now 
bear in mind what we have already insisted on, 
that we shall come to no clear and rational knowl- 
edge except that of Divine Powers as manifested 
in their operation. It seems to me that this is 
very significantly intimated by the fact that the 
Spirit is called the Holy Spirit. Do you think 
that this adjective " Holy " is used as a mere epi- 
thet of dignity ? 

No ; now that you have suggested it, it is plain 
that as a mere epithet it belongs quite as much 
both to the Father and the Son. When reserved 
specially to the Spirit it must be to denote, besides 
the general character, a special activity of God. 



106 THE NEGLECTED TEEM 

Exactly so, and so the Scriptures use it. It is 
simply as Spirit that " God quickeneth all things" 
In imparting movement to the elements of the 
world, " the Spirit of God moved upon the face of 
the waters" as Genesis tells us. In imparting life 
to the creatures, the Psalmist says, " Thou sendest 
forth Thy Spirit, they are created" But the work 
of the Holy Spirit Jesus describes thus : " He shall 
bear witness of Me ; " " He will convict the world in 
respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judg- 
ment ; " " He shall guide you into all the truth" 
Is it not plain why He is called the Holy Spirit — 
not because of what He is, but rather of what He 
does in producing holiness ? 

I see this clearly enough. But what reason is 
there then in conceiving of the Holy Spirit as a 
distinct Person ? 

None at all ; this conventional and technical 
phrase is so misleading that Calvin himself ex- 
pressed his readiness to abandon it, provided the 
truth it is aimed at be otherwise expressed. The 
Holy Spirit is God Himself in a special form of 
His activity — God quickening conscience to truth, 
and loVe, and righteousness. The personality of 
the Holy Spirit is the personality of God energiz- 
ing in this special line of His power. 

I see this, and can hardly conceive of anything 



IN THE TRINITY. 107 

more than this. But will all Trinitarians be con- 
tent with this? They say the Holy Spirit is 
something more substantial than a Divine influ- 
ence. Jesus speaks of the Spirit as " He/' and 
they say you cannot call a mere influence " he." 

That is mere word-play. What is the influence 
of any person ? It is not a thing separate from 
the person, and set in motion by him. Any per- 
son's influence upon us is simply some one's per- 
sonality influencing us. We feel it, and it is he 
whom we then feel. The contention, that the 
Holy Spirit must be more of a personality than a 
Divine influence can be, is simply a piece of the 
pagan way of thinking about God that still is com- 
mon, thus : God is far off. His influence is like 
that of the stars, a ray remote and faint. If He 
comes to us personally, it must be by sending a 
member of the Trinity, a personal being, the Holy 
Spirit. But the Biblical thought of God as near, 
and "in us," tolerates no such mechanism. 
Wherever God is, He is personally. 

" Spirit to spirit. Ghost to ghost." 
His influence is Himself. 

I think the objection w T ell disposed of. Now, 
as I understand you, you think of the Holy Spirit 
as God in His special activity for holiness, and by 
holiness you mean 



108 THE NEGLECTED TEEM 

Moral perfectness. (i Be ye holy, for I am 
holy" " Be ye perfect as your Father is perfect" 

Very good ; now how would you demonstrate as 
clearly marked a distinction here between this 
third Power and the other two, as there is between 
those two? Between the Father and the Son 
there is the obvious distinction of the Transcendent 
Life and the Immanent — God above all forms, 
and God within all forms. But what were we 
saying about the manifestation of the Son ? Was 
it not for the realization of the Divine Life in hu- 
manity " unto the measure of the stature of the ful- 
ness of Christ ? " Now, what I want more clear 
in my thought is this : How does this Divine 
Power in the manifestation of the Son differ recog- 
nizably from the Divine Power in the operation of 
the Holy Spirit? Do they not seem to run to- 
gether, and coalesce, as a single activity instead of 
two? May not one say that the distinction be- 
tween the Son and the Holy Spirit is more nom- 
inal than real, each of them being really the per- 
sonal activity of God for the producing of moral 
perfection ? 

You have clearly put a point of which I have 
myself felt the force. What Paul says of Christ, 
" The Lord is the Spirit" shows the coalescence of 
activity you speak of, and is apparently in line 



IN THE TRINITY. 109 

with your suggestion that the distinction is more 
nominal than real. But we shall find the ground 
of a broad and plain distinction as soon as we 
scrutinize the actual facts of life. Has it not 
sometimes occurred to you, that while we all share 
one life in common, each has a distinct individual- 
ity of his own ? As no one leaf of the forest is in 
every particular the duplicate of another, so it is 
with us men. The type is one, the temperaments 
are innumerable. The Divine Power is in us all, 
in one stream of life, but it is in each with a differ- 
ence of gifts, and so it comes to pass that, 

" God fulfills himself in many ways." 

Our consciousness, whether of self, or of God, is 
strictly our own, so as often to be incommunicable 
to another. How truly Keble puts it : 

li Not even the tender est heart, and next our own, 
Knows half the reasons why we smile and sigh. 
Each in his hidden sphere of joy or woe, 
Our hermit spirits dwell and range apart." 

In this individual consciousness each of us in the 
great mass, pervaded as it is by a common life, is 
by himself, both as an object of the Divine regard, 
and as a subject of a Divine responsibility. Now, 
this being so, what is our need ? Is it not to real- 
ize, first, our community as children of one Father 



110 THE NEGLECTED TERM 

in the one Divine Life of the Son, and next, our 
individual birthright of grace from Him, and of 
duty to Him, through the quickening Spirit ? 

I see it. This last, then, is what you view as 
the work of the Holy Spirit, to awaken and sus- 
tain this individual consciousness of a Divine grace 
and a Divine duty. 

Precisely so. Collectivism is one thing, and in- 
dividualism is another, but quite as necessary. 
Just here you find a sufficient ground for the 
broad distinction you seek between the two lines of 
the personal activity of God which are represented 
by the two terms, the Son and the Holy Spirit. 

I admit that this is reasonable enough. But is 
it a Biblical view, as well as a philosophical ? 

It is. The classical passage is in Paul's dis- 
course to the Corinthians " concerning spiritual 
gifts." " There are diversities of gifts, but the same 
Spirit, * * * dividing to each one severally, even 
as He will." 

This is a somewhat new view to me. I had 
always thought of the Spirit as working for collec- 
tivism rather than individualism. That same 
passage you refer to says, " In one Spirit were we 
all baptized into one body" Then there is the fa- 
miliar phrase of the apostolic benediction, " the 
communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all" 



IN THE TRINITY. Ill 

True, but what is this communion? It in- 
cludes the impartation of the Holy Spirit as a Di- 
vine gift to all, in whatever diversities to each, to- 
gether with the impartation by each to others of 
his own individual share. The very differences 
and inequalities of our individual shares are thus 
designed for an individual communication of bene- 
fits, which is to build up the collective life of the 
whole as a life of love. So Paul puts it in his 
figure of the body, which is " knit together by that 
which every joint supplieth, according to the working 
in due measure of each several part" A healthy 
collectivism is impossible apart from a healthy in- 
dividualism. The life of the whole depends on 
the life of each and every part. The individual is 
as important as the mass composed of individuals. 
As a matter of history, w T hat has come of disre- 
garding the individual? Nothing but despotism 
in government, stagnation in society, corruption in 
morals. And do you not see that this is a funda- 
mental condition of all religious and moral pro- 
gress, that the individual man should regard God 
as dealing, not only with the church or the state in 
general, but with him in particular ? Each needs 
to feel himself as responsible to God as any or all 
others ; each needs to feel that God cares for him 
singly as actively as for all. 



112 THE NEGLECTED TEEM 

I admit it. And I see at once that it is this con- 
viction of individuals from which has sprung all 
reform, and all those ideas of human rights and 
duties from which modern liberty, and philan- 
thropy, and the general enrichment of life have 
proceeded. Is it not just in this point of fostering 
individualism that Calvin's doctrine of Election is 
correlated with your doctrine of the Holy Spirit ? 
This was the thing in Calvinism that powerfully 
promoted democracy, as Froude observes, by mak- 
ing the peasant believe that in relation to the grace 
of God he was on a level with the prince. 

True indeed. It needs but slight acquaintance 
with history to see that spiritual life with moral 
and religious power has ever spread from individ- 
ual centres — from an Abraham, a Moses, an 
Isaiah, a Paul, a Luther, from solitary hearts 
which enshrined a sacred and contagious fire, from 
lonely seers whose divinely anointed eyes made 
them prophets and guides to nations. Thus from 
the Holy Spirit in individual breasts ever flows 
" the communion of the Spirit," diffusing ' from 
man to man the thrill of feeling, the awe of con- 
viction, the mandate of duty, the bowing of con- 
science to the inner revelation of the Spirit of 
Truth. Have we not plainly reached here what 
we were looking for — a grandly distinct line of 



IN THE TRINITY. 113 

Divine Power, attested Biblically, historically, 
philosophically, as the special activity of the Holy 
Spirit ? 

I think so. And what you have been saying 
recalls a remark of Baron Bunsen, that the chief 
power in the world is Personality. 

I thank you for the word. It suggests this 
comment, that it is precisely in this line that the 
historical development has taken place, which dis- 
tinguishes modern history from ancient history, 
and Christian lands from non-Christian. The for- 
ward movement of the world has been eifectual 
chiefly for the development of this idea of human 
personality, with its correlated rights and duties. 
And the historical fact is, that this has taken place 
chiefly under those Christian influences which are 
sometimes called " the dispensation of the Holy 
Spirit." It is precisely in the doctrine of the Holy 
Spirit that the truth of personality is glorified. 

I wish you would enlarge a little on this subject 
of personality. The word is common enough, but 
my conceptions of the thing are all too vague. 

We shall better apprehend what personality is 
by thoughtful communing with ourselves, than by 
any elaborate definition of this core of the self- 
conscious spirit. It is indeed " the secret place of 
the Most High " within us, the very penetralia of 



114 THE NEGLECTED TERM 

our humanity, the shrine where resides the inviol- 
able conscience; where rests the untransferable 
obligation ; where is heard the Divine Voice that 
speaks to each apart ; where is felt that embrace of 
the Everlasting Arms which assures the humblest 
and the least of his individual preciousness to God ; 
where glows the sacred fire that no floods of perse- 
cution can quench ; and whence issue the inspira- 
ations which uplift the world. It seems most cer- 
tain that the realization in the world of the Divine 
humanity, which is idealized to us under the image 
of the Son, depends on the realization in the indi- 
vidual of the divineness and sacredness of his own 
personality. Just this is the work of the Holy 
Spirit, as Jesus said, " He shall glorify Me, for he 
shall take of Mine, and shall declare it unto you" 

Please explain this. I do not quite see the per- 
tinence of the quotation. 

Why, it is simply this : The work of the Holy 
Spirit is to quicken and enlighten the apprehen- 
sion, not in Christians only, but also outside of 
Christian lines, of those Divine truths concerning 
man's relation to God which it is the mission of 
Christ to illustrate. Thus, even before the Gospel 
has been carried to a pagan land, the Holy Spirit 
has laid a foundation for it in the germination of 
some Christian principles there. Within the great 



IN THE TRINITY. 115 

circle of the common life, which is animated by 
the power of God the Son, are the little circles of 
the multitudinous individual life, which are the 
special laboratory of God the Holy Spirit. His 
distinct work is by His diverse communications to 
develop in each individual personality that life of 
Divine Sonship which, whether latent or manifest, 
is universal in the world, but perfected only in the 
Christ, and through Him. 

You have put it convincingly as well as clearly. 
The work of the Holy Spirit is the perfection of 
spiritual life, and this is a line of Divine Power as 
cardinal and as distinct as the creation of life. I 
judge, then, that the importance of it to us is the 
measure of our need to believe in it, as pupils of 
the Spirit. 

I am glad to hear you say so. The Holy Spirit 
is as necessary an object of Christian faith as the 
Father and the Son. The poverty and weakness 
of many nominally Christian lives plainly indicate 
a faint idea of the Holy Spirit and of what He 
does. But the work of the Father and the Son is 
frustrated where the work of the Spirit fails. 
Thus it is that Christian faith so often degenerates 
into mere dogma, lifeless and petrified, though still 
called Christian. Only as led by. the Spirit can 
we realize our fellowship with Christ in sonship to 



116 THE NEGLECTED TERM 

God. In short, there is nothing so necessary for 
the invigoration of moral decrepitude as an intelli- 
gent faith in the Holy Spirit as the Divine Soul of 
the soul, " whose temple" says Paul, " ye are" 

There is still a question I have to put. All our 
conversation has had reference to the terms of the 
Nicene Creed. Now it is just in this part which 
relates to the Holy Spirit that the Creed has been 
altered. It was this alteration which divided the 
Greek from the Roman Church, was it not ? 

It was. The creed now reads thus : " I believe 
in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life, 
Who proceedeth from the Father and the Son." 
And the Son is the addition, made in the year 589 
by a local council. Five centuries later it caused 
the schism you speak of. 

What do you think of the propriety of the 
change ? 

It seems to me sustained by Scriptural author- 
ity, though we cannot cite for it the exact words of 
Scripture. Jesus indeed says, that the Spirit " pro- 
ceedeth from the Father" But He also says, U I 
will send Him unto you" The Spirit is also called 
" the Spirit of Christ" and " the Spirit of the Son" 
I think, however, that the change was not merely 
defensible ; it was a required change. It seems to 
be, as we said about the test-word homoousios, a 



IN THE TRINITY. 117 

case where men builded better than they knew. 
Like that, it indicates how the Spirit of truth has 
guided Christian thought in these fundamental 
matters in advance of the maturer attainments of 
Christian knowledge. 

I shall be much interested if you will go more 
fully into this view of the case. 

Just recall, then, what we were saying of " the 
communion of the Holy Spirit," as including all 
communication of spiritual benefits from man to 
man. What is the going forth of spiritual life 
from the church to the world but the proceeding 
of the Spirit from the Son ? It is, of course, from 
the Father, as the Transcendent Divine Life, that 
the Spirit, like all else, originally proceeds. But 
we have to distinguish in our thought between 
God in His transcendent activity above the world, 
and God in His immanent activity within the 
w r orld. Now the fact that it is by the spirit of 
those around us that we are habitually influenced 
to goodness, shows that it is to God within rather 
than above the world that we must immediately 
trace the process of the Spirit. It is not only from 
the historic Christ, but from the Christ in men, 
from the Divine Sonship that is realized in the 
world, that the Spirit, who proceeds from the 
Father, ever spreads. 



118 THE NEGLECTED TERM 

Certainly. If the Spirit of God does not pro- 
ceed from the sons of God, the world that needs to 
know God is in a hopeless case. 

It is. And is it not wonderful that in that 
dark time, when the night of the Middle Ages was 
setting in, this brief addition was made to the orig- 
inal Creed, supplying the further testimony needed 
to so precious a truth as this, that the abiding Life 
of God in human lives is the immediate source of 
the Power that works for righteousness ? 

I think so. And it seems to me more than a 
theoretical conception, if only one looks at in your 
broad way, regarding ourselves as partners with 
Christ in the Divine Sonship. This added clause 
in the Creed really lays emphasis on the practical 
duty of every son of God to see to it that the Holy 
Spirit goes forth from him to his neighbors. 

Well, now in view of all this, if such an ad- 
vance could be made on the original Trinitarianism 
even in that period of the world, does it seem im- 
probable that some further expansion of the an- 
cient lines can be effected by Christian thought to- 
day? 

Not at all. It rather seems inevitable, in view 
of what you have shown me of the fundamental 
change that has come upon Christian thought, both 
as to the oneness of human nature with the Divine, 



IN THE TRINITY. 119 

and as to the active indwelling of God within the 
world and in all its life. 

It has been my fixed conviction for years that 
such an expansion of the original lines must ulti- 
mately come. I do not think that the Christian 
world can rest permanently content with the limits 
of thought which the ancient Trinitarians reached. 
An arrested development of theology in this point 
will surely tend, as it has tended, to skepticism. 
But now that we have gone through the whole 
subject point by point, I doubt not that you are 
quite of another mind than when you said, at the 
outset, that you were not much of a Trinitarian. 

Indeed, I do not see how any Christian man can 
be anything but a Trinitarian, provided he has the 
Scriptural idea of God as in the w r orld, as well as 
above it, and in the individual as well as in the 
general life. But what has interested me most is 
not the mere theoretical comprehension of the 
truth that you have given me, but its evident prac- 
tical worth for spiritual culture. 

That is just my interest in it, and my interest in 
opening it to others. It is of small consequence to 
believe that there is a God. This " the devils also 
believe, and shudder" as James has told us. The 
momentous thing is, to know how God is related 
to the world and to me. The consequential thing 



120 THE NEGLECTED TEEM 

is, to reach such knowledge about this as to inspire 
an abiding faith and hope and love. Just this is 
what we come to in the Trinity. Here we are 
shown that the Infinite and Self-Existent and 
Hidden One, whom the agnostic hesitates even to 
name, is both the Paternal Source of all that is, and 
also at the growing tip as at the primal root of all 
that is — inhabiting all forms with His intelligent 
Power, and making all that live the multiform 
channels of His Filial Stream of life — then, as the 
Holy Breath, whose promptings generate our 
prayers, perfecting His life in us by the inspira- 
tions which become our aspirations to realize our 
sonship to Him. Representing all this, the Trin- 
ity becomes to us the expression of the Christian 
idea of God, in His gracious relation to the depend- 
ent world. Now this idea of God has a name to 
fit it, and what is that name ? 

" The Father, and the Son, and the Holy 
Ghost " — the Triune Name, as I can now call it 
with a better understanding of it. 

Just so. Now by its peculiar name of God, en- 
shrining and expressing its peculiar idea of God, 
Christianity is the only faith in God which 
answers to the world's need. The symbol of this 
faith is the Trinity. Christ, in parting with His 
disciples, left it with them as their concise, suffi- 



IN THE TRINITY. 121 

cient and all comprehending Creed. " Baptize 
them" said He, " into the Name of the Father, and 
the Son, and the Holy Ghost" Dr. G. P. Fisher 
has well spoken of the Trinity as " a hieroglyphic." 
Such it is, a symbol pregnant with sacred power. 
" It represents," says Dr. Schaff, " the whole of 
Christianity, as a brief summary of all the truths 
and blessings of Revelation." 

You remind me of a remark of Charles Kings- 
ley, that whether the doctrine of the Trinity be in 
Bible, or no, it ought to be there, for our spiritual 
nature cries out for it. 

Even so. What we want is some watchword 
and pledge of the vital and active union of the 
One w T ith the All, of the Highest with the hum- 
blest. Just that has Christianity given us in the 
Triune Name. To the weary and troubled world 
it comes like an angel's chant, repeating evermore, 
" The Eternal is thy Refuge, and underneath are 
the Everlasting Arms" 

I now realize this more vividly than ever be- 
fore. You have made light fall on many dark 
questionings that have troubled me. There is so 
much in the w r orld that looks like grim fate. The 
iron wheels of nature grind, and grind, and tears 
drop, and blood flows, and there seems no sympa- 
thy for us in the vast machine. Is this the work 



122 THE NEGLECTED TERM 

of Fatherly Power? How often I have been 
tempted to cry out, There is no Father ; my Lord 
is Fate ! 

I have had the same experience. But now 
what it is that brings us out of the fog and mire of 
such despondency, you see. In the worst straits 
Job still cleaves to his integrity. At such a time 
it is God in conscience, the Holy Spirit, who re- 
minds us that we are not clay but spirit, free, at 
least to what righteousness we will. Accepting 
this as our true freedom, we enter through the nar- 
row door of duty into the wide communion of the 
Spirit with all the like-minded, especially with the 
cross-bearing Christ. We hear His note of tri- 
umph : " In the ivorld ye shall have tribulation, but 
be of good cheer ; I have overcome the world" 
His assurance begets our confidence, that the 
Power within the iron wheels is not malign ; that 
goodness is there, eternal, invincible. Our eyes 
are opened ; we see how inseparable are " the king- 
dom and patience of Christ" 

" Thy pierced Hand guides the mysterious Wheels, 
Thy thorn-pierced Brow now wears the crown of Power. 

Thus we come by the Son to the Father. Thus 
through the Spirit we have fellowship with the 
Father and the Son, and in the wildest rage of 
earthly tempests the peace of God. 



IN THE TRINITY. 123 

Is it your thought, then, that our faith in God, 
must, so far as it a real experience, grow from 
faith in the Holy Spirit, Gocl in conscience, teach- 
ing us to realize our sonship to Him ? 

I do indeed think so. We may discover God 
everywhere, but we close with Him nowhere, if not 
within ourselves. Here only does His light first 
rise on our darkness. Here, in the inspiring 
Breath of " the Comforter," are the springs of all 
our power to do or bear. The church has by no 
means made enough of this. The question which 
Paul put to " certain disciples " at Ephesus, is 
now, as then, a critical question for us all : " Did 
ye receive the Holy Spirit ivhen ye believed f " 

I believe this is what you were lately saying, 
that the defectiveness of much nominally Christian 
life is due to a defective recognition of the Holy 
Spirit. 

It is too true. The church has been so intent 
on maintaining " the form of sound words " con- 
cerning the deity of the Son, that she has forgotten 
that without the Spirit the form is of little worth. 
So there has been a great deal more of orthodoxy 
than of spiritual life. There is nothing so impera- 
tive now as to develop in Christian consciousness 
and experience that pregnant clause of the Creed, 
" I believe in the Holy Ghost." 



124 THE NEGLECTED TERM IN THE TRINITY. 

I think that if church teachers believed thor- 
oughly in the actual guidance of the Spirit, they 
would not be so afraid of new disco veries, and un- 
trodden paths ; they would not in every genera- 
tion repeat the Jews' mistake of stoning the 
prophets. 

Ah, I fear we are all of us, in one way or an- 
other, under the same cloud. " Lord, help our un- 
belief! " is the prayer that befits us all. 



SUPERNATURALISM, FALSE AND TRUE 

THE TRINITARIAN TEST 

THEOCENTRIC THEOLOGY 



1 — fflfyzn 3 ?ce bopg tide a cocfc-fror^e, 
91 find it in mp heart to embarra&j tfrem 
%V tnntina tfcat tfceir $t\tk$ a mocfc fror^e, 
^Cnti tfrep teaHp carrp tobat tbep £ag carried tfrem." 

Browning. 



V. 

SUPERNATURALISM, FALSE AND TRUE. 

THE TRINITARIAN TEST. 

THEO CENTRIC THEOLOGY. 

Shortly afterward, as I was idly busy in my 
library, my friend dropped in. What do you 
think, he brightly asked, has come oftenest to my 
mind from our last conversation ? 

Indeed, you Avill have to tell me that. 

It was the fact of that wonderful addition to the 
doctrine of the Holy Spirit, which the Nicene 
Jreed acquired in the sixth century, in an age 
when both learning and Christianity were in a 
long decline. And with this your question con- 
tinually recurred : Can we not, then, in this age, 
expect some further expansion of the old lines ? 
It seems to me that we must expect it. 

I think so, toe. But that is not all we must 
expect. 

127 



128 SUPEENATUBALISM 

Pray, what else ? 

Has that sixth century extension obtained gen- 
eral acceptance even yet ? 

No, the Orthodox Greek church still regards it 
as heretical, and excommunicates all its adherents, 
the larger part of Christendom. 

Well, something similar we may still expect. 
Doubtless, many will move on into the larger 
Trinitarianism which modern thinking requires. 
But quite as many will stay within the narrower 
lines of the past, and will imitate the Greek 
church in calling themselves " the orthodox." I 
believe the resemblance will end there. There is 
too much of the Holy Spirit now in the church to 
permit the new Trinitarianism to be again ex- 
communicated by the old. 

So I trust. And now, since you speak of the 
new lines on which our thought runs, will you for 
the sake of perfect clearness name in a summary 
way the main points through which you think 
these new lines will be drawn ? 

Briefly, they are these two, the Incarnation and 
the Divine Sonship. It is our enlarged concep- 
tions of these two which necessarily expand the old 
Trinitarianism. For instance : Men have been 
pointed to Christ as the solitary Incarnation of 
God. They reject it because it seems to be an iso- 



FALSE AND TRUE. 129 

lated wonder. To accept it, they must be shown 
that, as Dr. Dale has said, it is not so. The Di- 
vine Life which appears in Christ full-orbed had 
had through previous periods its long prelude of 
grey twilight and brightening dawn. It is an ethi- 
ical life, and ethical life is not a thing of sudden 
generation, but of long development. The Incar- 
nation of God is not a mere event, but an age-long 
process, of which we see in Christ the consummate 
ripeness. In like manner, men reject the Trinita- 
rian idea of the Son of God, because it is repre- 
sented as an abnormal thing — the very substance 
of God passing through human birth into but a 
single individual of our race. We escape this dif- 
ficulty also, when we gain an enlarged idea of the 
Divine Sonship. We view it as constituted not 
by the generation in one individual of a Divine 
Substance (a thing we can know nothing of), but 
by the generation in all of a Divine Pow T er ; a Life 
which is, seminally at least, Divine. 

Do you mean to take exception to the doctrine 
of the miraculous conception and the virgin birth ? 

No, that is on independent ground as simply an 
act of Divine power. It depends on nothing so 
unthinkable as the generation of a Divine Sub- 
stance in a human body. AVhether one accepts it 
or not, this, at least, is true : All life, whether 



130 SUPERNATURAL1SM 

miraculously or naturally generated, is generated 
by God, and in all its forms and varieties is filial 
to the Paternal Life of the All-Father. The biol- 
ogist affirms that all life is radically one. The 
theologian must add that all life is radically Di- 
vine. What is ethical is Divine. In the higher 
ranges of life its ethical nature becomes strikingly 
apparent. The rudiments of this ethical nature 
appear even in the life of the lower creatures. 
What comes out in the blossom must be in the 
root. And so we say with certainty, that life, be- 
ing constitutionally, even when unconsciously, eth- 
ical, is also Divine. 

Does it not, then, seem to you that the Church 
ought to rest its faith in the Divine Sonship of the 
Christ on the manifest glory of His peerless ethical 
life, rather than on the inscrutable process by 
which it affirms that " the Word became flesh " in 
the womb ? 

In all reason, yes. It seems to me a most in- 
consequent bit of logic by which theologians assert 
that a specific physiological process — the miracu- 
lous conception of the Holy Child — is the neces- 
sary basis of such a spiritual fact as a life whose 
ethical glory is manifestly Divine. Mark you, I 
do not here dispute the miraculous conception. I 
only deny the necessity, of it to constitute the 



FALSE AND TRUE. 131 

Christ the Son of God. The root of Christ's glory 
is, as its flower is, ethical, not physical, and what 
is ethical is fully as substantial a thing as what is 
physical. The usual theological argument is an 
utter non sequitur, and, as such, it works no small 
damage to Christian interests. As long as some 
men have doubts whether Divine power really 
wrought a miraculous conception, it is of vital in- 
terest to faith that they should see that the Divine- 
ness of Christ does not stand or fall with that. 
That the Word has become flesh was clear to the 
Evangelist who u saw His glory, full of grace and 
truth" It is manifest to all who see the same in 
the moral perfectness of Christ. It does not in 
the least depend on how the Word became flesh, 
whether miraculously or naturally. To deny this 
is not only to defy all logic, but it is to blind men 
to the supernatural light which is in Christ. 

Have we not come here to that topic which you 
brought up some time ago, but reserved for subse- 
quent conversation — the false supernaturalism, of 
which you said that a true conception of the Trin- 
ity makes riddance of it ? 

We have, but not for the first time. We have 
come to it in point after point of our whole discus- 
sion. We came to it first in the Athanasian doc- 
trine of the Eternal Sonship, in which we saw that 



132 SUPEMNATUBALISM 

the revelation of God in some Form, or Word, is 
no intrusion into the established order of things, 
but a part of the order ; that Divine self-expression 
is the Divine order. Again we came to it in our 
expanded view of the Incarnation, when we saw 
that the Incarnation of God is " no abnormal and 
isolated wonder " — whatever wonders be connected 
with it — but that it is the Everlasting Way of God 
to embody Himself, that is, His eternal life, His in- 
telligence, His power, in successive forms of life, 
from rudimentary to perfect. We have now come 
to it again in our corrected view of the relation of 
the Son to the Father as moral and spiritual rather 
than miraculous ; when we see that Christ's perfect 
Sonship to God is not constituted by a physiologi- 
cal process before birth in the flesh — though we do 
not deny the miracle — but by an ethical develop- 
ment, a process in the spirit. 

I see perfectly well what a break we have made 
with those current ideas of the supernatural, which 
view it as an intrusion into nature of a power 
outside of nature, a break into the established 
order, a sort of amendment to the constitution 
of the world. But does not such an idea lurk 
in the very word supernatural — super naturam — 
" above nature ? " 

It does not lurk there unless you have first hid- 



FALSh' AND TBUK 133 

den it there by fancying that the word "above" 
means a position above, a place outside that order 
of constantly appearing and disappearing things 
which we call " nature " — a word which means all 
tilings that are born into being. 

What, then, do you take the word " above " to 
mean ? 

I think it refers to the sovereign Power that is 
within nature. My idea of this power is that of 
Aristotle, who likened the process of nature to the 
work of a carpenter capable of fashioning timber 
from the inside. The supernatural is " above na- 
ture " simply as moulding and controlling nature. 
Is it not plain that one who objects to the super- 
natural as a power interfering with nature from 
outside of nature manufactures his difficulty by a 
mistaken definition ? 

Plain enough. This crude and fallacious defi- 
nition seems to be from the same loom with that 
pagan notion of an outside God which you have 
often referred to as vitiating so much of current 
thinking. 

It is so. And, on the contrary, the basis of all 
rational supernaturalism is in the Scriptural con- 
ception of the Living God, as not only the original 
Author of nature, but also its perpetual Inhabitant 
— nay, its Life, the all animating as well as all 



134 S UPBRNA T URALISM 

transcending Power, who, as Holmes's noble hymn 
says, is 

" Center and Soul of every sphere." 

I see the point which the whole Trinitarian con- 
ception secures. It is from God at the heart and 
center of things that the Power proceeds, which 
moulds and governs the ever rising and vanishing 
series of phenomena which we call the order of 
nature. 

You have fairly put it. This is the only con- 
ception of the supernatural in which scientists and 
theologians can agree. And I have been struck 
by the fact that Aristotle's philosophic conception 
of the natural process is also Neander's theological 
conception of the supernatural process. Continu- 
ally does this great historian of the church repeat 
the remark, that the Divine work goes on " from 
within outward." In the phraseology which has 
come in since his day we describe God's processes 
as " evolutionary." Exactly this is the true ac- 
count of the supernatural. It is not an extraneous 
and interfering, but an internal and evolutionary 
control of nature. Of course, you see how our ac- 
count of the Trinity leads directly to this account 
of the supernatural. 

Indeed I do. When Ave do not have to look 
beyond the world or outside of ourselves to find 



FALSE AND TRUE. 135 

God, we do not have to look anywhere but to the 
heart of nature and of man to find the supernatu- 
ral, the constant Power which shapes and vitalizes 
the changing forms. 

True, and here you observe also how our con- 
ception of the Trinity informs our conception of 
the supernatural, as more than mere power — power 
perhaps unconscious and impersonal. It is intelli- 
gent, self-conscious, personal power, the power of 
" the Living God/ 7 immanent in the collective life 
and movement of the world, and individualized in 
the intuitions and aspirations of each separate spirit, 
so as to fulfill, " through all and in all" the Eter- 
nal Thought of the Father who is " above all" 
You see that it is on this Trinitarian idea of God 
that we can build the supernaturalism which is 
Christian and rational in place of that which is pagan 
and irrational. 

You have made the point very clear, and I 
judge it to be your conviction that a variety of col- 
lisions between the schools of thought would be 
well ended, if men were only at one in the true 
Trinitarian idea of God. 

That is just so. In fact, every one of the cur- 
rent questions at issue, whether between the men 
of science and the men of faith, or between parties 
in theological controversy, runs back into some 



136 THE TRINITARIAN TEST. 

difference on the radical question of all thought, 
who, and what sort of being, is God? And no 
answer to this question is sufficient which falls 
short of the Scriptural idea of God, as involved in 
the Triune Name of God, as The Father and The 
Son and The Holy Ghost 

For illustration's sake I wish you would name 
some current controversy, where a false supernatu- 
ralism is the root of division, and then show me 
how a true Trinitarianism is the root of concord. 

Well, there is the burning question, just now, of 
a Supernatural Revelation. Learned critics say 
there are some errors in the Scriptures, not im- 
portant, but yet errors. Hereupon some theologi- 
ans unwisely decry learning. Their idea of Super- 
natural Revelation is that it comes down from God 
above the world, and consequently must be free 
from error, or else it is not Revelation. Their 
mistake is in looking to the Father above the 
world, rather than to the Son and the Spirit within 
the world, as the immediate source of Revelation. 
God the Father is the original source of Holy 
Scripture, and of all things, but not the immediate 
source. If He were we should have the flawless 
Bible that some insist on. You see, I think, the 
point where this whole controversy about an iner- 
rant Bible begins and ends. 



THE TRINITARIAN TEXT. 137 

I think I do. Your idea is, that Revelation is 
the unfolding of the life and the thought of God 
within the world. 

Precisely. Revelation results from just that 
indwelling and outworking of the life and thought 
of God within the world which the Trinity repre- 
sents to us. Our idea of the Trinity determines 
our idea of what a Supernatural Revelation is, not 
descending from above, but developing from with- 
in. With such an idea of it, no one is troubled 
by finding errors in the Scripture, any more than 
by finding imperfections in any physical work of 
God, as in the human eye. 

Certainly not. Revelation by inward intuition 
of Divine truth, through the work of the Holy 
Spirit interpreting the life of the Son, will natu- 
rally be evolutionary and progressive. 

Yes, and so various human crudities may be ex- 
pected to adhere to it for a time, and later to fall 
away, as the teaching of the Spirit goes on. The 
whole process, you see, will be thoroughly natural 
in form, and yet supernatural, both in its working 
power and in its results, as a Divine Revelation. 
And the whole controversy, you also see, would be 
impossible, but for the crude conception of the 
Trinity as a Divine trio of " Persons " operating 
upon the world, or descending into it, from outside. 



138 THE TRINITARIAN TEST 

So it seems to me. Let me ask you here if we 
do not find a broader idea of Revelation, in gen- 
eral, involved in the broader idea of Incarnation 
and Divine Sonship which belongs to your idea of 
the Trinity. 

Certainly. God everywhere immanent, and 
everywhere individualized, is everywhere express- 
ive. And expression, as soon as recognized, be- 
comes Revelation. So Paul says of the heathen : 
" That which may be known of God is manifest in 
them, for God manifested it unto them." And so, 
every work of God is a word of God, as the nine- 
teenth Psalm says : 

" Their line is gone out through all the earth. 
And their words to the end of the world" 

Every godly life is also a Revelation of God, as 
the proverb witnesses : " the church is the irreli- 
gious man's Bible." The wisdom of the pagan 
sages is composed of rays of " the light that" as 
John said, " lighteth every man" God had proph- 
ets among Gentiles as well as Jews. To admit all 
this derogates nothing from the supreme glory of 
Holy Scripture. 

I judge, then, that you do not admit the distinc- 
tion that many make between natural religion, as 
among heathen, and supernatural religion, as 
among Christians. 



THE TRINITARIAN TEST. 139 

I do not. It is another bit of that false super- 
naturalism we have spoken of. All religion, so far 
as it is religious, is supernatural, if we use the 
word to signify the Power moulding nature from 
within. It was in the third century that Tertul- 
lian wrote, " The soul is naturally Christian/' 
All men pray. And, as the poet says, 

" Prayer is the breath of God in man, 
Returning whence it came." 

All this is specially interesting to me. In one 
of our conversations you did me good by showing 
me what I had never dreamed of — the relation of 
the Trinity to the practical religious life. And 
now I am equally glad to discover how it deter- 
mines the doctrines of Christianity. All this is so 
different from the common notion that the Trinity 
is an isolated mystery, and more of a strain on 
faith than a help either in conduct or in belief. 
You have good reason to call it, as you did, the 
truth of truths. 

It is no less than that. You will find, as you 
think things through, that there is not a doctrine 
of Christian theology which is not determined for 
us, and in a way that often differs much from pop- 
ular notions, by the doctrine of the Trinity in the 
expanded view we have taken of it. Men reject 
the Trinity because presented to them in a form all 



140 THE TRINITARIAN TEST 

too narrow, as having only one visible point of 
contact with the life of the world, in a single 
epoch, and in the single life of Christ. They will 
believe more of it as they see more of it. And 
such belief will carry other helpful beliefs along 
with it. In fact, you will here find Principal 
Fairbairn's remark not only thoroughly but hap- 
pily true : " You may have a system of theology 
in a single doctrine." 

If I am not taxing you, please lead me a little 
further in this line of thought. 

Well, as we have been speaking of Supernatural 
Revelation, let us speak of Supernatural Grace. 
The majority of nominal Christians regard this as 
limited to a special form of church order, and to 
the ministrations of a special class of ordained per- 
sons, called clergy, as the exclusive channels of 
that grace to the world. Even in this nineteenth 
century, only a minority in Christendom hold a 
larger thought of it. The controversy still goes 
on, but slight progress is made by it. 

No ; the dispute over texts, such as, " I give 
unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven" really 
seems unprofitable. Where each contradicting in- 
terpretation claims to be the only correct one, who 
is to decide? And meantime outsiders have a 
show of reason in saying, We shall not join the 



THE TRINITARIAN TEST 141 

church till you have determined which is the 
church. 

Well, then, in all such cases of barren contro- 
versy over texts, what one needs to find is some 
" master of sentences," some regulative principle of 
interpretation, as " the judge that ends the strife." 
Such an arbiter is the doctrine of the Trinity. 
The sacerdotal sense put upon those proof-texts, so 
called, which can prove nothing apart from their 
underlying principle, is decisively set aside by the 
Trinitarian principle, that God is immanent in all 
the social life and growth, and individualized in 
each personal conscience. This makes it clearly 
impossible that the flow of Divine quickening 
should be restricted to the channel of a single or- 
ganization and a special class of men. What then 
should we have to think of the family as a channel 
of Divine grace, and of the influence of religious 
parents upon children too young to be ministered 
to by clergy? That notion of sacerdotalism is 
simply one of many sprouts from the pagan fallacy 
that God, secluded from the multitude like a king, 
deals with them from a distance by a class of min- 
isterial agents. 

In so saying do you side with those who, like 
the Plymouth Brethren, decry organized churches 
and ordained ministers ? 



142 THE TRINITARIAN TEST 

Not at all. What is essential to the well-being 
of religion is to be distinguished from what is es- 
sential to its being. A church militant must be a 
church organized. An episcopal organization may, 
under certain social conditions, promote the well- 
being of religion better than any other. What is 
most efficient for religious life at any time is the 
way of God for that time. I only contend for the 
principle, " Where Christ is, there the church is." 
The Divine life in Christly men owns no bound- 
aries of priestly prescription. Ecclesiastical organ- 
ization and orders cannot limit the gracious com- 
munications of the everywhere indwelling and 
outworking God. 

You have referred to the so-called proof-texts of 
controversionalists as requiring to have their true 
sense determined by some master truth like the 
Trinity. What seems to you the most important 
case of this sort ? 

To name one as important as any, I will in- 
stance the doctrine of the Atonement. What do 
you take to be the current idea of this ? 

This, in brief — an offended Deity who is pla- 
cated by an equivalent of suffering endured by a 
substitute for the guilty, the release of whom 
makes it a necessity of government that there 
should be an exemplary exhibition of justice. 



THE TRINITARIAN TEST 143 

Well, is not this logically demonstrated out of 
the Bible as the proper view to take ? 

It seems to be. I have never been able to re- 
fute the argument for it that I often hear con- 
structed from the proof-texts, and yet I am never 
convinced. It has seemed to me that there must 
be a fallacy, though I could not discover it. 

The fallacy lies in that misconception of God 
which the Trinity protests against. It comes of 
regarding God as a Potentate external to His realm, 
who enacts and administers a statutory law exter- 
nal to the nature of His subjects. In the light of 
the Christian idea of God, which is given us by 
the Trinity, those dogmas about a governmental 
expedient for a legal quittance of the guilty lose all 
that semblance of reality with which a sensuous 
fancy invests them, and the proof-texts into which 
they have been smuggled by such a fancy will be 
found full of an ethical and spiritual teaching that 
is far more true. 

There are a great many of those texts, but you 
might instance one for illustration. 

Well, take those which speak of Christ as " the 
propitiation for our dns." If this is made to point 
toward God in heaven, as requiring to be propi- 
tiated, the idea is abhorrent to Jesus' teaching in 
the parable of the father and the prodigal son. It 



144 THE TRINITARIAN TEST. 

can only be accepted as pointing to God in the 
conscience. It means that Christ brings peace to 
the conscience, and satisfies the Divine demand 
which is felt therein. 

I suppose we are too much given to using the 
altar language of the Biblical writers in a literal 
sense. 

Yes, and the only adequate corrective is the 
Trinitarian conception of God as the Supreme 
Moral Power, who inhabits the inner world of 
thought and feeling, as he inhabits the outer world, 
and the highest heavens. In this view the Atone- 
ment of Christ, while indeed drawing its material 
and its imagery from the work of God in history, 
is not a reparation offered at a historical epoch to 
God on a heavenly throne, but rather to the Di- 
vine Spirit in the sinner's breast. It is in the pen- 
itent and praying heart that, as Paul says, "the 
Spirit Himself maketh intercession for us with 
groanings which cannot be uttered" And here the 
true Atonement of Christ is wrought, where groan- 
ing conscience in the purifying fellowship oi 
Christ discharges its burden by repentance, and is 
at peace. Such an Atonement is not a govern- 
mental work outside of us, but an educational 
work within us. It is valid in heaven, because 
it is complete on earth. Of course, I have here 



THE TRINITARIAN TEST. 145 

condensed much into a few words. The general 
principle is, that the Atonement, however mediated 
by historical incidents, is not an historical propitia- 
tion of God in space and time, but a spiritual pro- 
cess of God within the conscience. I will give 
you a little book in which you will find this con- 
ception thoroughly worked out.* 

If I might push inquiry but one point further, 
do you think that the problem of the future state 
is open to modification by your conception of the 
Trinity? 

In this one point, certainly. The idea that the 
death of the body draws a line, beyond which 
God's saving grace is cut off from those who have 
till then resisted it, must be given up. This 
might square with the notion of God as operating 
from without. He is supposed to fix a time be- 
yond which His offers expire. It is when you die, 
whether soon or late. But this arbitrary limit — 
twenty years to one, ninety to another, is utterly 
inconsistent with the conception of God the Spirit 
as the perpetual Inhabitant of conscience so long as 
conscience exists. It is the fact that God is in 
conscience, which makes redemption possible now. 
So long as God is in conscience redemption cannot 

* The Divine Satisfaction : a Review of what should, and 
should not, be thought about the Atonement. — T. Whittaker, 
New York. James Clarke & Co., London. 



146 THE TRINITARIAN TEST 

be impossible. But the awful possibility is not to 
be forgotten, that, in the incorrigible sinner, con- 
science may become extinct. Then, as Jesus said, 
" If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is 
that darkness ! " 

Well, I agree with you that the popular notion 
of an outside God is the prolific mother of theolog- 
ical fallacies. And it is a rare service you have 
done me in showing me how to apply the principle 
which cuts them all up at the root. I see how 
true in the world of thought, as in the world of 
matter, are the words, " In the beginning, God." 
Every step in Christian thinking depends on our 
thought of God. And to secure the Christian 
thought of God the Christian Name of God is 
given us in the Trinity. 

Yes, that is exactly what Christ has told us in 
the words of His last prayer with the disciples : 
" I have manifested Thy Name unto the men whom 
Thou gavest Me" Of course, He did not mean 
merely that He had named God to them, but 
rather, had given them a name of God which con- 
veyed a true thought of God. The name He then 
had given them was simply the name of the 
Father ; true, but not complete. Later He com- 
pleted it by the full announcement of the all com- 
prehending Triune Name. 



TJIEOCEXTEIO THEOLOGY. 147 

We hear much now about the present interest of 
Christian thinking as being Christological. Does 
that mean that Christ is the centre of it ? 

In one point of view, yes. All the lines of true 
thinking about God run back to Christ, as our 
source of true theology. But the ultimate centre 
of thought is for us, as it was for Christ, the trans- 
cendent God, the Father. He whom the Apostle 
calls, " the effulgence of the Father's glory" is to us 
as the mirror from which are flashed upon us the 
rays of the hidden luminary. Theology, as Prin- 
cipal Fairbairn says, must be on its historical side 
Christocentric, but on its doctrinal side theo- 
centric.* The thought of God which we get from 
Christ becomes the centre which determines the 
lines of our religious faith, our doctrinal belief, our 
moral effort, our social aim. And so our thought 
must be in its development Christocentric, in order 
to become in its ground and working theocentric, 
as Christ's thought was. And whatever, either 
in thought or practice, is not theocentric, will 
sometime break down and pass away. 

I remember reading, years ago, of a famous ser- 
mon of Lyman Beecher's, which he began with 
this striking remark : " Jesus Christ is the acting 
Deity of the universe." That looks very Christo- 

* Address at the Congregational Council in London. 



148 THEOOENTBIC THEOLOGY. 

centric, but I suppose you would say it is very im- 
perfectly and crudely so. 

Yes ; and it fairly illustrates the recent remark 
of a Trinitarian reviewer, " the current orthodoxy 
is current heresy." In their ill-proportioned 
thought of the Trinity orthodox divines have made 
the Son overshadow the Father and the Spirit. 
It is a way they have of riding single texts so as 
to override the salient facts of the Scripture, in 
which Deity absolute always overshadows Deity 
revealed in form. Remarkable, indeed, is the Di- 
vine self-consciousness of Christ. Equally re- 
markable His Apostles' adoration of Him as above 
every other name in earth or heaven. But equally 
significant is it, that He joins with His Apostles in 
looking up to the infinite Father both as " My God 
and your God" over all, as well as through and 
in all. The oft recurring theocentric phrase of 
Scripture, which places Christ " at the right Imnd 
of God" shows how unbiblical ia the orthodoxy 
which insists on ignoring the subordination of 
Christ to God. When the church comes at length 
out of the rudiments into the completeness of the 
Incarnation doctrine, it will be plain enough that 
God within the limits of form is a particular being, 
not to be confounded with God as the formless and 
universal Being. 



THEOCENTBIC THEOLOGY. 149 

But arc there not texts which give plausible 
color to Dr. BeedierV statement? For instance, 
we read in Hebrews i: 2 and 3, " By ichom also 
He made the worlds ; " and again, " Upholding all 

things by the word of His power" This might be 
thought to cany the idea that Christ is both the 
Creator and Preserver of the universe. 

Well, the Revisers have here, as in 1 Corinth- 
ians viii : 6, given another turn to the thought. 
You remember our discussion of that passage.* 
Instead of " by whom " we now read " through 
whom/' and explain it in this present as in that 
previous case. The Revisers also in the margin 
explain " the worlds w as " the ages." It is not 
the worlds of astronomy, but the worlds of human 
history, ancient and modern, that are meant. The 
thought is, that the Divine Life which was with 
the Father, and was manifest to us in the Christ, 
is immanent in the whole course of history as the 
quickening and organizing power of the successive 
periods of development which we term " the ages." 
What, then, does this require us to understand by 
the closely connected expression, " Upholding all 
things by the word of His power f " Evidently the 
context limits it to the course of the ages, " all 
tilings " in which are upheld — or as the word may 

* See page 57. 



150 THEOCENTBIC THEOLOGY. 

just as truly mean, carried on — by the Christ- 
Spirit immanent at the centre of the whole move- 
ment. In this sense we may recall Mrs. Stowe's 
line, already quoted : 

" Thy pierced Hand guides the mysterious Wheels." 

Whatever more than this may be true of Christ's 
activity in other worlds than this planet, this text 
has nothing to say of it. And then you will no- 
tice how the passage goes on to speak of Him to 
whom it attributes all this, not as in the central 
seat of Divine control, but as " on the right hand 
of the Majesty on high" To speak of Him as 
" the acting Deity of the universe/' is merely a bit 
of careless rhetoric, and in such a subject careless- 
ness is culpable. 

So it strikes me. Christ constantly identified 
Himself with God, but He never confounded 
Himself with God. There was a distinction which 
He always reverently observed. It seems to me 
that His favorite affirmation, " The Father is in 
Me" carries with it the implication, " The Father 
is above Me" 

Doubtless it does. This is the theocentric and 
truly Christocentric line of thought about the Trin- 
ity. And this line, I should say, must be drawn 
through these three points : (1) The eternal subor- 
dination of the Son to the Father, clearly recog- 



TIIEOCENTRIC THEOLOGY. 151 

nized in Scripture, though disallowed by an unbib- 
lical dogmatism. (2) The eternal generation of 
the Son by the Father in perpetual incarnations or 
embodiments of the Uncreated and All-creating 
Life, idealized to us primordially in the Logos, or 
AVord, and historically perfected in the Christ. 
(3) The relation of Christ to God as unique yet not 
abnormal, but the ideal of our relation to God in 
a Sonship essentially ethical, and constituted both 
for Him and for us by the communion of the Spirit. 
The first of these points secures us against Panthe- 
ism ; the second against Deism ; the third against 
the immoral tendency, observable in Protestants 
and still more in Romanists, of regarding Christ 
as a hopelessly inimitable ideal of Divine Sonship. 
Only as these points are held fast by Trinitarian 
thought can the rights of reason, the rights of con- 
science, and the rights of Christian fellowship be 
inviolably secured. 

It is an inspiring outlook ; but do you think we 
are coming on to any such broad and high ground ? 

I do, and, as I view it, with good reason. 
Principal Fairbairn tells us that theology is now, 
to a degree that would have been inconceivable a 
generation ago, " intensely Trinitarian." I cannot 
think this is due at all to a greater interest in the 
discussions that raged a century ago, when the 



152 THEOCENTRIG THEOLOGY. 

Unitarian schism occurred. It is due rather to a 
change of ground— the restoration of the Incarna- 
tion to its proper place as the focus of Christian 
thought, and to a fresh perception of its real sig- 
nificance when viewed through the Biblical truth 
of the Divine Immanence. The fact is, that we 
have been like Paul's " foolish Galatians," in 
bondage to the rudiments of a great truth, and are 
only now beginning to come into the realization of 
a glorious inheritance. 

I suppose that the incident you referred to in 
our first conversation — your Unitarian friend con- 
fessing agreement with the Nicene Creed, as viewed 
from his spiritual standpoint — is fairly indicative 
of the change of view that comes with the change 
of ground you speak of. 

It is ; and in degree as the idea of God, as ever 
immanent, and ever incarnating Himself — which 
is the centre of the Trinitarian conception — works 
in men's minds, we shall find not only the theolog- 
ical schism healing, but the chasm between faith 
and science filling up. The conception of the uni- 
verse and of life which evolutionary science insists 
on finds its appropriate theological symbol in the 
Trinitarian doctrine of the Eternal Sonship. Like- 
wise, the Supernatural energy, which the scientist 
fails to find outside of nature, is here discovered 



THEOCESTRIC THEOLOGY. 153 

hidden in the roots and vitals of nature, as the 
universal life that is affiliated to the Life of God. 
Men are beginning to see that the order and uni- 
formity of nature are no less divine than the ap- 
parent breaks in it that are called ' miraculous. It 
is not a stagnant but a progressive order, and God 
in it is its Power for progress. The unhasting, un- 
resting, but increasing purpose which impels the 
ancient course of nature toward its far-oif goal and 
ideal is nature's testimony to what is at the heart 
of nature ; it is nature's perpetual " Gloria Patri" 

I thank you for the suggestion of that noble 
chant. I shall never listen to it again without a 
profounder stir of soul. I used to think of it 
simply as a fine piece of music composed in honor 
of a mysterious Three on a far-off throne. 

I, indeed, never weary of its repetition any more 
than of the Lord's Prayer. There is a sublimity 
in it as of the mountains of God : 

" Glory be to the Father, and to the 
Son, and to the Holy Ghost ; 

as it w 7 as in the beginning, is now, and 
ever shall be, world without end, amen." 

No incense-burning is here ; no distant salute. 
It is the comprehensive confession both of our faith 
and of our duty. 

Pray tell me what thoughts in particular you fit 



154 THEOCENTEIC THEOLOGY. 

it to correspondent^ with your enlarged thought 
of the Trinity. 

It reminds me that we give glory to the Father 
when we humbly devote ourselves to fill our allotted 
place with service to the Father ; when we take an 
interest in seeking the truth, that we may learn 01 
the Father ; when we let our light shine in good 
works, that through our brotherhood others may 
come to the Father. We give glory to the Son 
when we honor the Divine rights of humanity, both 
by making the most of ourselves and by helping 
others to do the same, for the realization in us and 
in all of the life that is truly filial to God. We 
give glory to the Holy Spirit when we alike obey 
our own consciences and respect those of our neigh- 
bors, when we prefer the fellowship of a truth- 
seeking spirit to that of a truth-containing form, 
when we press on to find God in new forms as well 
as in old, and receive men to sympathy as broadly 
as God invites them. 

How your words take hold of my conscience. 
This grand old chant draws heaven and earth into 
unison. It is not for church-service only, but for 
the daily path of plodding patience in well doing. 
It is an exhortation to ourselves to lead the Kfe 
that the Trinity inspires, to live by the truth that 
the Trinity expresses. Its words are not in the 



THEQCENTBIC THEOLOGY. 155 

Scriptures, but they are the sum and substance ot 
the Scriptures. 

You have well said. Here is the sum of all 
Revelation, here the necessary object of all saving 
faith, here the simple rule of all human duty : — to 
know and to glorify God as The Father, and 
the Son, and the Holy Ghost. 



EPILOGUE. 

By way of epilogue to the foregoing record of 
our conversations, it is fit to subjoin, with special 
reference to some practical bearings of the subject 
discussed, an extract from a letter written shortly 
after, while my friend was spending the winter of 
1892 in California. 

" In return for your favor in sending me the 
report of speeches by Dr. Abbott and others at the 
Unitarian Club, I enclose some clippings of a sim- 
ilar sort from the California papers. It is a sign 
of the times to find Boston and San Francisco 
simultaneously interested in our recent theme of 
discussion. As you see, the Trinitarian contro- 
versy has been running on in our papers for weeks. 
Your remark, that a fresh discussion of the old 
question was at hand, seems to have been prophetic. 

" Mr. Cook's strictures on Dr. Abbott's position 
do little credit to his sagacity. When he says : 
1 The attribute of self-existence causes God to differ 

157 



158 EPILOGUE. 

from man, not merely in quantity and quality of 
being, but in its inmost essence/ lie strangely fails 
to see that moral nature cannot exist in us without 
having previously existed in God. Individually, 
of course, we are not self-existent, but we share in 
the moral nature which is, as belonging originally 
to God. As you used to insist, there cannot be 
two kinds of moral nature, divine and human, es- 
sentially different from each other, unless there are 
also two kinds of morality, likewise different. 

" But our Californian debate convinces me more 
firmly of the truth of your remark, that the old 
line of Trinitarian argument can lead to nothing 
but a dead-lock. Each party scores some hits, 
and that is the end of it. If the thing aimed at 
in theological discussion is not victory, but har- 
mony in the truth, the road to this, on the present 
subject, is on a higher level than has been hitherto 
taken. No agreement can be reached but through 
the larger conceptions of the Eternal Sonship and 
the Divine Incarnation which you showed me, and 
of the essential oneness of all spiritual nature, 
through which even our humanity partakes of what 
is infinite and divine. 

" What seems to me the thing now to be in- 
sisted on, as of supreme importance to all who look 
beyond controversy to agreement in the truth, is 



EPILOGUE. 159 

this : The dividing line to be drawn to-day is not 
a horizontal one, but a vertical. We need less 
regard to the superficial distinction between denom- 
inational names, and more regard to the profounder 
distinction between spiritual men and unspiritual, 
both of which classes are found in varying pro- 
portions in all the denominations. The time is 
ripe for making a better distinction than has yet 
been made between those who hold and those who 
do not hold, in the central place, the truth, so 
vital to spiritual life, of a Divine Incarnation 
which is in reality the manifestation in very man 
of very God. 

" Now as to this, so competent a witness as Dr. 
A, P. Peabody says, that very many Unitarians 
regard the Incarnation, in the most obvious sense 
of the term, as the central truth of Christianity. 
Yet among Trinitarians many do not so regard it. 
They put in the central place the Divine Sov- 
ereignty, or the Atonement. Then, consistently 
enough, they tell us that Christianity is essentially 
not a life, but a dogma. And of these a very 
large number, nominally believing in the Incarna- 
tion, really believe in something else than what the 
Scriptures present as the fact. God in flesh is 
their notion of it, rather than God in man. What 
they see in Christ is a divinity so superior to hu- 



i60 EPILOGUE. 

man limits of knowledge and power, that He re- 
tains little more than the form and semblance of 
humanity, instead of the real and thorough man- 
hood which is indispensable to the moral need we 
have of Him. 

" You see I have been doing some thinking on 
the line you marked out. I have discovered this 
at least, that ' Unitarian ' is as ambiguous a term 
as i Protestant/ and I might say the same of 
' Trinitarian/ These names, often used as mere 
party cries, serve as a mischievous blind to a just 
and helpful discrimination. Speaking now of 
Unitarians, candid observers cannot fail to see that 
there are two very unlike sorts. The practical in- 
terest of the one sort is the same as ours — to lift 
men up to Christ's divine level. The other sort 
seem more intent on letting Christ down to re- 
duced human measures. With these I do not see 
what we can have in common. The vital question 
now at issue really, as it always has been at least 
nominally, is whether we recognize in Jesus man 
only, or God in man, nor this merely, but the ut- 
most of God that can be manifested in man. 

" Dr. Peabody tells us that this last is the view 
actually held by the majority of Unitarians. If 
this be so, as doubtless it is, why should any, who 
agree with them in this essential point, shut them 



EPILOGUE. 1G1 

out on points of speculation as to how God came 
to be thus manifest in man, or as to whether it is 
the second or the third Person in the Trinity, the 
Eternal Word or the Eternal Spirit, which consti- 
tutes the God in Christ, or as to whether it is the 
Divine Essence, or the Divine Power, which is in- 
carnate in Him, or on the nice distinction which 
Mr. Cook finds between God incarnate and God 
indwelling ? The medieval schoolmen, who took 
time to dispute on such subjects as the excrements 
of angels, might here see a field for intellectual 
finesse and division. But for Christians facing 
the gigantic antichrist of modern secularism to 
waste their force by division on such points seems 
to me sheer treason to the practical interests of 
Christ. 

" Must we not conclude that the best service to 
the truth, and to the charity apart from which 
truth is dead, is that all spiritual men, all earnest 
believers in a redemptive Incarnation, however 
they explain it, should seek to close with each 
other as nearly as they can ? We need not doubt 
that in the warmth of spiritual affinities dogmatic 
oppositions will melt into their proper dimensions. 
The more men pray and work together for the 
kingdom of God, the sooner will they come to 
think together in a good mutual understanding. 



162 EPILOGUE. 

The pressing need to-day is to cast out the devils 
which infest Christendom, and to get the will 
of God better done on earth. Christ took into 
His fellowship, and we ought not to exclude from 
ours, all who were ready to co-operate with Him 
in this. i Whosoever shall do the will of God, the 
same is My brother, and sister, and mother. ? 

" When Christians are ready to i come to 
Christ } in this, and to substitute His spiritual con- 
ditions of brotherhood for the dogmatic conditions 
which they have set up, it will be the beginning of 
the end of their doing the work of antichrist by 
wasteful division of Christian forces. Just as the 
opposite sides of an arch impart stability and 
strength to each other when united at the top, so 
when spiritual men of divers ways of thinking 
draw together in their common loyalty to the law 
of Christ, the various elements of truth they have 
severally held apart in exclusiveness will become 
their common heritage for their augmented power. 
Our fractional Christianity sadly needs to be in- 
tegrated. We must rise above dogma into spirit 
and life. We can come together only at the top." 



THE WORKS OF 

James Morris Whiton, Ph.D. 



BEYOND THE SHADOW; or, The Resurrection of 
Life. Third Tkotisand. i2mo, cloth, $1.25. 

Contents : The Present Difficulty — Christian Thought Out- 
growing the Creeds. The Resurrection a Continuous Reality. 
The Resurrection Exemplified in the Risen Christ. The Res- 
urrection an Object of Christian Endeavor, Attained at Death. 
The Coming of Christ in His Kingdom a Reality of the Past, the 
Present, and the Future. Judgment a Present and Perpetual 
Reality in Both Worlds. The Last Judgment not Delayed till 
the Resurrection. Particulars Elucidated by Principles. The 
Resurrection a Development, not a Miracle, Summary and 
Conclusion. 

^OL" The substance of a conception which in the course of thirty years is 
likely to transform Christian thinking upon the subject." e ' 

— R. W. Dale, D.D. 

TURNING POINTS OF THOUGHT AND CON- 
DUCT. Sermons preached in Carrs Lane Chapel (Dr. R. 
W. Dale's), Birmingham, 1887. i2mo, cloth, $1.00. 

Contents : The Preparation. The Reaction of Sin. Ques- 
tions about Heaven. The Eleventh Commandment. What is it 
to Receive Christ ? The Poor Soul. The Presence of the Lord. 
The Eighth Commandment. The Omniscience of God. The 
judgment Seat of Christ, Our Partnership with God. The 
Elect of God. 

" Characteristically rich in progressive thought and fresh interpretations 
of Scripture, clothed in the attractive simplicity of a pure English style." 

— The Springfield Republican. 
" Such sermons as ' The Reaction of Sin/ ' The Eighth Commandment/ 
f The Poor Soul,' and ' The Judgment Seat of Christ/ are calculated to stir 
the heart and conscience like blasts from the trump of" doom." 

— The Nonconformist. 

THE LAW OF LIBERTY AND OTHER DIS- 
COURSES. Sermons preached in London, 1888. i2mo, 
cloth, $1.25. 

Contents : The Law of Liberty. Solomon : An Old Story 
with a New Face. Helping God. Spiritual Barbarism. The 
Mystery of Evil. The Assurance of Immortality. The Trans- 
figuration : a Glimpse of the Unseen World. Is Deception Ever 



Duty? The Trinity. Balaam: the Moral Cross-Eye. The 
Advent of the Christ. The World's Balance Wheel. 

" Strong, fresh and brilliant." — The Independent. 

" Profoundly thoughtful, distinctly original, eminently practical, and 
elegant in diction. They are attractive to fascination." 

— Cambridge Magazine. 

NEW POINTS TO OLD TEXTS. Sermons preached 
in Glasgow, Edinburgh and London, 1889. i2mo, cloth, 
#1:25. 

Contents : Reconciled to God. Better than a Book Religion. 
Life and its Incarnations. The Present Pledge of Life to Come. 
The Objective Efficiency of Prayer. In God. Elijah the 
Prophet. Elisha, Seer and Politician. The Gift of the Spirit. 
Miracle and Life. The Gospel according to Jonah. Usury, 
Ancient and Modern. 

" We have seldom read a more interesting, and, upon the whole, we may 
say excellent volume of sermons." — The Saturday Review, London. 
" Both spiritual and rational, critical and constructive." 

— The Christian Union. 

EARLY PUPILS OF THE SPIRIT; or, The Ethi- 
cal Development of the Prophets of Israel. i2mo, 
paper, 20 cents. 

The perplexed question of the inspiration of the Old Testa- 
ment is here discussed in an evolutionary line of thought, and in 
a reverential, but vigorous and helpful way. 

" Very strikingly interesting and instructive." 

j — The Christian World, London. 

THE DIVINE SATISFACTION. Third Edition. A 

Review of What Should and What Should Not be Thought 

About the Atonement. i2mo, paper, 40 cents. 

" A much more valuable contribution to the subject than some much more 
pretentious treatises." — The Christian Union. 

WHAT OF SAMUEL ? i2mo, paper, 40 cents. 

" More in touch than Canon Rawlinson with recent scholarship." 

— The Literary World. 

GLORIA PATRI ; or, Our Talks about the Trinity. 
i2mo, cloth, $ 1. 00. 



THOMAS WHITTAKER, 

2 and 3 Bible House, NEW YORK. 



mi 



